I do so love a mystery or three....

... particularly when it looks like a new lead may have appeared.
 
My one remaining brickwall mystery at the 2* great grandparent level is William Austin (this page will get updated hopefully soon as it reflects an old theory that is looking to be supplanted by the following, even though the mother's suggested name of Caroline is still possible, just not the one currently shown.

Courtesy of DNA matching it is looking rather like that mystery may now have some chinks in it.
Which all look to have some fairly stubborn brickwalls behind them!

On this page:

• The DNA
• The Research
• The Theory
• The Update

The DNA

I have to caution myself that as yet I do NOT know that the match is definitely from the line of my match's paternal grandmother's ancestry that appears to be "of interest", but it is looking increasingly possible.

I've ruled out it being from her maternal side thanks to an overlapping sizable segment of DNA she has with a known maternal 1st cousin and my aunt who does not match the 1st cousin, so different ancestral sides for that bit of DNA (thank you GEDMatch for the ability to compare across sites for those uploaded to there).

Her closest match on MyHeritage looks to be from her paternal grandfather's side and none of my kits there match him/her.
But nor does their DNA overlap "ours" at any point, so inconclusive.
Added circumstantial evidence however is that it appears my match may have a crossover point between paternal grandparents on chromosome 10, as one of our matches abuts a segment from the above closest match.

(chr 10 DNA Painter segment to be inserted here, but seems a bit reluctant to do so)

Regardless of where the DNA eventually proves to be on her ancestry it is still a new clue to someone on mine as this is our closest unidentified match and we are all very near the top of her match list, so there is definitely a connection somewhere yet to be identified.

The research

Enough of the DNA, what about the research that has to go hand in hand with it?

As mysterious families go the family of William AUSTIN and Emma Parker CLINTON have thrown a few curlies into my research over the years.

Daughter Caroline Emma AUSTIN's name and origins being the first one.

I've used her as a case study in a study session or two as to the traps official records may set us.

My first official cert. purchased was for her marriage in 1882 to Matthias ROWE, reasoning that as the first she would be the source of the info for, and should know her parents.
She didn't even know her name (or age), let alone her father!
Caroline Emma Austin GIBSON, daughter of William Austin GIBSON, laborer, and Emma CLINTON.
By the time she died, the informant for her barely legible death cert. provided the information that Emma ROWE was the daughter of __ AUSTIN, labourer, (step father John GIBSON) and mother Emma GIBSON maiden name unknown.

The murk didn't clear much further with her mother's 31st Dec 1855 marriage cert. to Capt John GIBSON in Melbourne.
Emma CLINTON obligingly stated she was single and had no children from any former marriage (Caroline Emma was already 1 by this point).
Back in Feb 1853 before emigrating to Victoria Australia on the "Roxburgh Castle", Emma CLINTON of full age, daughter of William CLINTON had married William AUSTIN, porter, no father shown.
Beyond this cert. and the baptism of Caroline Emma in Feb 1854, Parish of St James, Melbourne to William and Emma AUSTIN, I have no further sightings of William AUSTIN.
No 1841, no 1851 census, no death.

Perhaps that's a "had", no further sightings?

Keep an eye on the developing thread on RootsChat re
William Edward Sinclair Fitz AUSTEN b. 1869 Mile End Old Town
https://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=808750.msg6682101#msg6682101
son of William Mallars Fitz AUSTEN / AUSTIN (and looking increasingly to be aka William Mallars FITZAUSTEN) and wife Sarah BIGGS formerly BLAKE
(historical RootsChat thread continued in the above)

The main mysteries here being William Mallars Fitz AUSTEN / AUSTIN / FITZAUSTIN's whereabouts prior to the 1869 marriage and birth of son William Edward Sinclair Fitz AUSTEN and his parents.

See also the matching family being developed /summarized on WikiTree
https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Austin-1468
Also on the FamilySearch tree
https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/G9QT-L4F

Both of these latter two are collaborative, free to use trees.
Feel free to add any research you have to either, with sources.

The Theory

My current theory from all of this is that William, like Emma, had re-married, but William put a bit more distance between his old and new lives by heading back to England, whereas Emma merely crossed the ditch to New Zealand.

If true and can be proven this makes the DNA match that prompted all this a half 3rd cousin to myself (and 1st cousins), and half 2nd cousin once removed to my aunts, and the amounts of DNA shared fits well with the observed stats on the DNAPainter interface to the shared cMs project

Given I'd never found a death for William AUSTIN I've always called Emma my bigamous 2xgreats granny, much to my father's disgust.
This makes it look like what was sauce for the goose was also sauce for the gander.

When I rang home many years ago to update my parents with the above find re Emma's marriage cert. to Capt John GIBSON saying she was single, with no children, my Dad tut tutted
"oh, you don't want to find out that sort of thing" he said.
"That's half the fun Dad why would you care?
It was back in 1855 - and Mum's side of the family"

The Update (Jun 2019)

Additional weight for my above theory is developing in the form of a new match to all of us on MyHeritage.
A 2nd cousin once removed to our initial match, so shared common ancestors are William Edward AUSTEN and Alice Maud CARTER.
With a fully triangulated segment on chromosome 10 for my family and theirs so we all still have a common ancestor who gave us that bit of DNA at least.
Now to rule out the CARTER ancestry and avoid confirmation bias!
We await a test from Ancestry which should show patterns for this latter.

Aug 2019

Ancestry results now in do not show any shared CARTER ancestry matches with the few kits we are able to compare on Ancestry. In addition, the sole close-ish CARTER cousin that is easily identifiable as also being on GEDmatch, and has no matches to any of the relevant AUSTIN kits, so AUSTIN is looking even better.

Not a lot of tested cousins on these lines for any of us makes it harder to draw solid conclusions here but I think I'm now convinced I know what happened to my 2*great grandfather William AUSTIN, after his arrival in Melbourne, so that's my last brickwall at the 2*great level declared demolished.

Maternal side Chromosome Map update

I see that my Paternal side chromosome map was last published Dec 2016.
The intention was for the companion Maternal side map to follow shortly thereafter, but 2017 had other plans.

Click to enlarge

A quick reminder for myself of the maternal brickwall ancestors that I hope DNA will one day aid in cracking (see embedded WikiTree Widgets below for each of my maternal grandparent's pedigrees):

• Jane GIBSON: supposedly born Martock, Somerset in 1812, married Simon ANDREWS in Martock, 1840 and emigrates to New Zealand on the "Timandra", arriving 1842.
• William AUSTIN: husband of Emma Parker CLINTON - disappears after arrival in Australia;  Emma remarries as a spinster with no children!
• William CLINTON: married Jemima PARKER in London, 1810 - and had the above daughter Emma Parker CLINTON

Way too many unknown grandparent segments as yet - but I hope that visual phasing* of my 3 first cousins' DNA will reduce that.
*Visual phasing links:

• https://isogg.org/wiki/Visual_phasing
• http://thegeneticgenealogist.com/2016/11/21/visual-phasing-an-example-part-1-of-5/
• https://genealogylady.net/2017/05/02/down-the-dna-rabbit-hole-visual-phasing-with-two-siblings/
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neB4oFlwJHA
  a hint: to mark who owns each crossover instead of the technique shown I used the owner's letter in a simple right justified cell which positioned the owner right next to the line.

My maternal grandfather's pedigree (WikiTree) - if you are a descendant of any of these PLEASE upload your autosomal DNA file (eg FamilyFinder from FamilyTreeDNA, Ancestry, MyHeritage, 23andme) to GEDMatch.com and contact me.
Every little clue helps.

embeddable family tree updated live from WikiTree

 My maternal grandmother's pedigree (WikiTree)

embeddable family tree updated live from WikiTree

How far have I got?

New year, review time.
Thought it was time to produce some chromosome map snapshots and remind myself why I'm having all this fun (and frustration).
The following illustrates the match coverage on my 23 pairs of chromosomes that has been identified as to which side of my ancestry the match "fits" - maternal or paternal.

The predominance of the pink over the blue makes it rather obvious that I do not have any close living paternal relatives available to test. My two maternal aunts still alive (both in their 90s) have however done their bit to humour their niece, and seem to attract the lion's share of the matches.

Why am I doing this?
To break down, or at least chip, several brickwalls.
Have I succeeded?
Not a lot as yet, but then I never really make time to stop and analyse the gaps in the above and then focus on the matches that have to be related to the ancestors that are causing this descendant so many problems tracking where they came from.

Who are they?
Archibald HENDERSON, a blacksmith at the Bridge of Allan, Stirlingshire.
Where did he come from?
Y-DNA testing has as yet not produced any matches, atDNA has thrown up some intriguing matches that may well lead somewhere eventually.
Amelia MILLAR, mother supposedly a Miss CHRYSTAL. From Kippen in Stirlingshire.
We do have a fascinating match with a family that includes both MILLARs and CHRYSTALs but we need to confirm that this is the line that the matching DNA comes from.
Any descendants of David MILLAR and Elizabeth CHRYSTAL out there willing to try their luck to see if we can prove that.
Jane GIBSON, born Somerset, mother supposedly a Jane GIBSON. Where did she come from?
Although we have a reasonable amount of identified DNA segments from Simon ANDREWS an Jane GIBSON, we don't currently know which bits come from the ANDREWS side and which from the GIBSON side. Any descendants of Simon's siblings out there and willing to test to see what we can learn?
John DAVIDSON, born Chirnside, Berwickshire to an Ann COLLINS. Whereas we have quite a bit of FAIRBAIRN DNA identified from John's wife, specific DAVIDSON segments are hard to identify. Any descendants of any of John's children tested? The New Zealand contingent is fully represented - me, unless others ended up here, as I'm the last living descendant of Adam. His brother James and sister Helen had no known children.
Not forgetting the potential Irish connections of:
William AUSTIN who mysteriously disappeared in Australia presumably before his wife/widow married her ship's captain saying she was single with no former children (so much for my great grandmother who was nearly 2 by then!). My only hope here is to be able to identify more of the DNA inherited from the CLINTON/PARKER side of the family, so I would love to hear from any descendants of William CLINTON and Jemima PARKER who may be intrigued enough to help out here.
William CLINTON above. Someone must know where he came from.

The above are the problem ancestors that stop me completing the rows of ancestors at 3* and 4* great grandparents, the "lines of 32 and 64".
But until then I will continue having fun contacting and working with matches, forming triangulated groups that share an ancestor somewhere/when and seeing where that leads.

With kits either in process or en route to the lab several other theories may well be dis/proven, so there's always something fun to do.

Love to hear from you if any of the above look familiar, especially if you hold the key to the puzzle.

The atDNA tests involved here are either that offered by Ancestry DNA - provided you then upload your resulting raw data file to at least GEDMatch.com (free, donations accepted) and also preferably FamilyTreeDNA ($39US to transfer the file from Ancestry) - or simply directly with FamilyTreeDNA using their FamilyFinder test.
(I've currently gone off using 23andme, their website has been "in transition" for weeks and isn't that useable at the moment, with no current signs of improvement)

If a descendant of any of the above and you do end up on FamilyTreeDNA, do apply to join my autosomal DNA project there, FFLornaHen.

Look forward to making 2016 the year the breakthroughs happen - with YOUR help.

Clintons or Austins or Parkers for a change

DNA results just in for another descendant of William CLINTON and Jemima PARKER have given us a few more identifiable segments for our chromosome map.

Click to enlarge

This is presented slightly differently to the last two snap shots in that  the common ancestor(s) to blame for the dna still detectable in descendants today is identified as opposed to the initials of the matches.
As some of the matches descend from Emma Parker CLINTON's 1st and some from her 2nd marriage we can specifically identify the dna we've inherited from Emma.
Which will be very handy as more matches arrive at those spots.
I thought that nice long segment on chromosome 18 might bring in a few more matches to explore for some ancestral hints, but no, not yet, just two small matches.


For quick reference, the last two shapshots were

Click to enlarge

Click to enlarge

A few more CLINTON/PARKER dna snippets

Slowly but surely...
Here's an updated chromosome map for the dna segments identifiable as being inherited from the common ancestors of William CLINTON and Jemima PARKER who married in London in 1810.

With many thanks to the two cousins found amongst our matches at 23andme - you have added new segments to the map.
One day this will help us find more about one or other of the ancestors of William and Jemima!

A small increase in knowledge of the map published in June.

Anyone else claiming descent from William and Jemima would be MOST welcome to add to our sum of knowledge.
Order a FamilyFinder kit*, and join the autosomal DNA project FFLornaHen!

* using this link to order gives WikiTree something towards their wonderful free collaborative tree.

Chromosome map update

Inspired by the GRAHAM dna story over the last two posts (and finally figuring out an easier way to produce the formatted data required), here's the current state of own chromosome maps.
I don't yet know whether any traces of this GRAHAM dna can be detected in my own genes (as opposed to my maternal aunts') as not all of those involved have uploaded to GEDMatch, yet, for the smaller segments to be checked.

The links to the respective surnames involved are to one of WikiTree's wonderful DNA features.
Just some of the more distant lines identified are added as labels on this post.

Paternal side map, ie my Dad's HENDERSON and DAVIDSON ancestry (Surnames involved):

Maternal side map, ie my Mum's ANDREWS and ROWE ancestry (Surnames involved):

Quite a few empty spots to go yet, not sure I'll live long enough to fill in all the gaps.

Inching backward

Knowledge of my mysterious Clinton/Parker ancestors has increased.
Analysis of FamilyFinder results just in for a 3rd cousin shows the following dna segments represent Clinton/Parker (or earlier ancestral lines) dna.

The FamilyFinder results don't show any others helpfully overlapping the above kits at the same points, so we aren't that much further ahead yet in finding previously unknown relations who can help figure out where William CLINTON came from, or any further hints about Jemima PARKER.

GEDMatch results yet to be explored.

Anyone else claiming descent from William and Jemima would be MOST welcome to add to our sum of knowledge.
Order a FamilyFinder kit*, and join the autosomal DNA project FFLornaHen!

* using this link to order gives WikiTree something towards their wonderful free collaborative tree.

Related or not?

The more observant of you may have noticed that my main webpages have been updated (Big Brother).
The list of recent changes is rather bunched up on yesterday, mainly because that was when I checked off the people updated since the last publication - and of course found and fixed all (most of?) the typos etc.

Jemima PARKER appears because I've been fossicking around seeing whether or not any of the  FamilyFinder matches of descendants can shed any light on her and William CLINTON's ancestry - and seeing if there are any lines of enquiry left to pursue.
This time round I decided to see if anything could be found via the marriage witnesses, given I'd a question mark on the spelling of one of them.
The witnesses to their 1810 marriage at St Alphage were given as a James [H/K]UZELL  and Ann CAMPBELL, and after a few false starts on what the name was most likely to be, I found what looks a likely pair marrying at St Alphage in 1813, James HAZELL and Ann CAMPBELL.

Anyone know anything about the family?
Dragged off the street to be witnesses? Friends? Relations? Waiting around in the church for another event?

I'm still digging, but it looks like James might have been a leather cutter, and may still have been alive in 1842 but I've not yet positively identified him or any of the family (daughters Sarah Ann, 1814, Charlotte, 1815, James Henry 1820, all baptized St Giles, Cripplegate) in the 1841 census.
There's a possibility in Essex which piqued my interest given Jemima's background, another in Berkshire and another in Somerset, which latter I think can be discounted. Jury still out on the others.

Chromosome map update

The above is an update on my earlier Chromosome picture, but using a more comprehensive tool, thanks to Kitty Cooper's ChromosomeMapper.
The reason for this update is the small orange segment of dna on chromosome 15, a newly detected, triangulated match* between myself, two maternal aunts and Richard, my 6th cousin once removed.
I and the aunts descend from Elizabeth ALGAR and Richard PEEK, Richard descends from Elizabeth's brother Samuel ALGAR of Yealmpton, Devon.
Their parents, Samuel ALGAR & Sarah LOWRY married in 1720, at Yealmpton.

There aren't quite as many unmapped areas as all the grey indicates on the above, I've simply left off the match segments from the very close relations where there is insufficient information on matches to enable segments to be tied to specific earlier ancestors.

To identify more of the grey bits, and thus help break through some of the brick walls, I would particularly love to hear from descendants of the following of my ancestral lines who may be interested in exploring their genetic heritage, and thus help pinpoint where some of the many  matches "fit":
- William CLINTON & Jemima PARKER
- Robert TURNBULL & Eleanor SCOTT
- Andrew GRAHAM & Jane GRAHAM
- William BATY & Sarah BATY
- John DAVIDSON & Agnes FAIRBAIRN
Check out my FamilyFinder project FFLornaHen, and the FAQs about FamilyTree DNA's  FamilyFinder test, and if willing to help, please contact me (details on footer of most of my webpages)

* for an explanation on mapping and triangulation, see this article in Roberta Estes' DNAeXplained blog

28th: Who is Francis, who is he?

Finally found Jemima CLINTON in the 1841 census tonight. Suspect I've not been successful in the past as dtr Emma, my great grandmother, wasn't at home and I had probably been searching primarily for her (younger members of a family generally having more accurate ages).
They were living at 31 Rose St, St Martins in the Fields, Long Acre, Middlesex (same address as 1851). However I wonder who the "25 year old" Francis was with them, seaman. An older brother for Emma that I didn't know about?

Also took the opportunity to check London baptisms for the family given they are now online on ancestry. As a result the William CLINTON/Jemima PARKER family has lost one of the members I had as I've convinced myself that the one I had as James? baptised in 1826, was simply an additional baptism for the 1817 James, given that date was written in the margin of his St Leonards Shoreditch baptism.
Which neatly solves the puzzle I had as to how come the James who lived to marry appeared to be the earlier 1820 Fish St Hill Independent baptism!

Other than this sudden London flurry, main activity of late has been on the Honor DAWE who married Nicholas COMBELLACK, and the family of Maria Jane DAWE and Richard PRYOR.
Honor and Maria are sisters. The activity is thanks to Karinya for contacting me re her possible x greats grandfather John Henry PRYOR, Maria and Richard's son, whom I didn't have in my database, but he certainly appears on the shipping list with several of his siblings in 1878. The family story is that Maria died at sea en route to Australia with her new second husband, and the children were abandoned once they reached Queensland. The reality may be a little different, as Maria's death is registered in Queensland, but then, that doesn't necessarily mean she wasn't a death at sea and simply registered on arrival. More later, I hope.

The Honor DAWE isn't my 2greats grandmother, but one of her cousins, and there's another NZ connection with the family! Still working on it.

Also the FAIRBAIRN DNA project has a new member and match (not in my line, but an interesting match nevertheless as it is another between a Fife FAIRBAIRN family and an Irish/Canadian FREEBORN one. Check the DNA project diary for further details.