The Power of the X

The players:

A chap curious what he'd learn from testing his DNA at Ancestry.

Someone who regularly monitors new matches on Ancestry over 20cMs and any with suggested Common Ancestors, ie me, a self confessed genealogy and DNA obsessive.

Assorted tested cousins who all share the suggested common ancestors, Isaac Smith Dawe and Betsey Metters (married 1818 in Devon), plus several sharing earlier generations, only a few of whom had tested at Ancestry.

Scene setting:

2017 MyHeritage: 

A match appears to myself and two cousins whose Most Recent Common Ancestors (MRCA) were the above Isaac Smith Dawe and Betsey Metters (married 1818 in Devon), one son migrated to Australia, a daughter to New Zealand back in the 1850s.
The match's tree has no obvious connection, but did contain an Eliza Cook who married in New Zealand in 1911, ancestors unknown.
Cook does feature as a married surname of another daughter of Isaac and Betsey but no known migration out of the UK for the line.
No response to "hi" message.

2018: a message received from this match asking if I knew anything about her, or any, Eliza Cook and could she have access to my tree please?
Responded, sorry but nothing obvious to help other than the DNA connection looked to be back up from Isaac and Betsey's family somewhere and she could keep tabs on progress on their tree in my online regularly updated basic BDMs of rellies and connections instead, given my MyHeritage tree is far from complete, being used to record research done at that site and DNA connections.

The connections

2022 Ancestry:

A new match over 20cMs appears (the above curious player) sharing with my maternal first cousin.

His small tree includes... Eliza Cook, married NZ in 1911. Ancestry unknown.

It didn't take much to join the dots, despite finding an Eliza Cook in the extended Dawe family, living with her mother's aunt's family in still living in Lancashire in the April 1911 census.

A passenger record was found showing Eliza and her cousin Hannah Parker departing Liverpool 28th Jun 1911 destination Wellington. 

The arrival of the "Arawa" warranted several column inches in the NZ Times of 10 Aug 1911 on its arrival in Wellington as it had been in wireless contact for most of the voyage thanks to being "fitted with the very latest type of Marconi wireless telegraphic equipment" 

So somehow Eliza met up with her newfound husband and married him in within two months of arrival (it has been suggested they may have met on the voyage as he had been in South Africa for a while)    

The message

Keep track of everything, dots do join -  eventually.

The MyHeritage match turns out to be the first cousin of the new Ancestry match, and previously unknown to each other until DNA introducing them.

But wait there's more: beware what DNA can tell you

With access to the X chromosome segment data on GEDmatch and FTDNA, (but not visible on MyHeritage) this Cook link had to be my new match's father's side not his mother's, which was a bit of a surprise, but did enable identification of which side was which in the new Ancestry SideView given his ancestral composition divided into two prominent ethnicities,  clearly separated by "side".

All power to the X- and Ancestry's new SideView. 

and for the downside....

For the second time on FamilySearch the same person has (re)merged my paternal grandfather with his namesake born in the same month and year, despite my collaborative note - which is now yet more detailed as to why NOT to merge them.

They were born a fortnight apart, one registered in Oamaru, the other in Palmerston North, ie separate islands of New Zealand.
The separate NZ Historical BDM index entries show their different parents had been added to a note on each, but that didn't deter this person.
Yes on the surface it looks like the one who married first may have moved islands and remarried but he didn't. He remarried a bit further north.
It doesn't help that the older fiche birth indexes for New Zealand don't make it easy to find them to add the place details to the exact birth dates and parents available from the Historical BDM index online at the Dept of Internal Affairs.
Both are indexed as Archifold Hinderson instead of Archibald Henderson!

This time I've added yet more research into the note on both profiles.
The North Islander has been placed safely up in Te Kuiti with his 2nd wife in the 1919 electoral roll, his father's obit has been added  as well, which places him in Cambridge (Waikato, North Island) whilst my granddad is recorded down in Woodhaugh, Dunedin in 1919 with his first and only wife Agnes later moving to Roxburgh, Otago (South Island).
I do know that he once ventured north, at least as far as Wellington, on his honeymoon, but he did not already have a son by then, at least not Cyril.

I've also sent the chap a message via FamilySearch to PLEASE STOP merging these Archibalds.

WikiTree has also been updated with a disambiguation note on Granddad, with the other chap now also added there, he is after all nearly family - his son married my mother's 2nd cousin!
But there are other things I'd rather have been researching last night in the time spent doing the additional research that should, hopefully STOP the "helpful" person from merging them again.

Thankfully such persistance is rare, and an apology has just been received.

This does not detract from the overall benefit of sharing tree research.
We do not own our ancestors but we do owe it to them to be remembered accurately.

Such trees do tend to get better over time as duplications are reduced, research notes added etc.

Just the other day I was re-examining the scant tree of a DNA match on Ancestry wondering where his missing link to my DAWE family was and this time round, someone had added exactly the link I was missing.
The FamilySearch tree has now been extended to link him back to the rest of his ancestors already there.
This allowed me to breakthrough that mystery and connect in a newfound 3rd cousin thanks to both DNA and the collaborative tree at FamilySearch.

So mark your key people to be "Watched" so you can keep an eye on changes, you never know what you will learn, or who you will "meet" as a result.

What do Sarah, Emma and William have in common?

Not a lot other than all three have been long pegged in my database as potentially being one and the same person as their namesakes in their respective potential "home" families.

Also that in the last few days investigating DNA matches, AND the matches of the new match, has led me to re-evalutate sources, search for more information, and in all three cases, merge the namesakes as I've finally been convinced that they are indeed whom I have long thought they might be.

DNA alone cannot prove a relationship, that takes research, perseverance - and notes to self about why you think they might belong to a particular family.

William is William McAdie, Customs Officer in London, born about 1830 Caithness. Marriage certificate shows father as George.
Long pegged as potentially William born Killminster, Wick to George McAdie and Elizabeth Rosie.
But there were other options, and only one had been truly ruled out of contention.
The one in Oz has still not been ruled out, but with DNA matches now popping up between descendants of William, and of the extended McAdie family, I've finally joined all those trees that had long ago connected William to George and Elizabeth. Thank you in particular to Susan and Noel, without your match on MyHeritage triggering a re-investigation of the DNA matches now available I would still have two separate William's in my database.

Emma is Emma Bidgood, born in Canada to Nicholas Richard Bidgood and his first wife Elizabeth Osborne. Was she the Emma who marries Daniel Treloar and ends up in Connecticut?
There are quite a few Emma Bidgoods and no definitive record I've yet found that connects Daniel's wife Emma to the daughter of Nicholas. Plenty of circumstantial evidence, just no records along the lines of handy marriage entry stating her father, any family members together with the Treloars in any census etc.
But in the last few days several DNA matches have popped up to join the sole tested descendant of Emma that I had already noted. Thank you Jeffory and Greg in particular, both for testing and for uploading to GEDMatch and MyHeritage (which is where I first spotted this set of matches) and for sharing an Ancestry Match list, which latter is where I found .....
a shared match whose tree included Sarah.

Sarah Bidgood married Richard Nicholas (son of Sarah Dawe). She was of an age to be the daughter of Abraham Bidgood or Turner and wife Joan Smith Dawe (Sarah's sister) but I'd not found her baptism and she never appeared with them in any census.
She does however appear in the 1841 an 1851 census records with Abraham's mother Mary, the 1851 census explicitly stating she is Mary's granddaughter, so definitely connected to Abraham somehow.
This time round, her marriage certificate was now readily available in the filmed FindMyPast Devon Parish Registers, and states that her father was Abraham Bidgood, labourer and that she was resident Newton Mill. Tick.
Bearing in mind the ambiguity of Abraham's last name, and with the filmed registers now available on FindMyPast, I also found the Jan 1835 baptism of one Sarah daughter of Abraham, labourer, and Joan Turner, of Newton.
Bingo.
So Sarah and Richard are first cousins.

Isn't it odd how lucky you can get when you work at your DNA matches?

• Mine the match lists for shared matches and extend their often incomplete trees
• Upload to GedMatch from all companies
• Get your DNA onto all the sites via the free transfers, or testing
  (http://genie.lornahen.com/lornas-links/dnalinks/atdna/#transfers 
  has some links on the pros/cons of test vs transfer)

But above all, keep looking, keep notes, review old research and never give up.

Chasing rabbits

I finished a "DNA finds" session at our local Genie group the other week with this image:

and, as always, ignored my own advice.
I should be methodically finishing off analysing, and publishing, what we've learnt from newly in  known-family tests on each of my Andrews, Rowe, and Dawe * lines.
* including finally, after 10 years, confirming the yDNA signature for the line of Isaac DAWE of Lamerton, Devon.

Instead I was having a look at the posts in the FaceBook group Genetic Genealogy Tips & Techniques and couldn't resist trying out one on how to visualise your Ancestry match lists (this link to my DNASurnames blog where I post general DNA type posts as opposed to those more related to my own genealogy work).
I ended up with a filtered set of groups that actually do interact - or have a match of particular interest in them:

My Henderson/Millar brickwall will some year find an answer amongst the dark blue group on the left.
My Jane Gibson brickwall amongst those in the light blue cluster top right.
That on the bottom right reminded me I'd not finished chasing the rabbit that led to a small cluster of more extended Fairbairn family matches ....

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

DAW(E) update

Time moves fast in the atDNA world!

No sooner had I prepared an update to the chromsome map showing the atDNA segments identified as being inherited from either Isaac DAWE or Sarah SMITH of Tavistock/Newton Mill/Lumburn, but yet another tested descendant popped up.
Those results haven't been included.

The two updated pages of relevance are:
DNASurnames now has an atDNA section in the DAWE DNA results - which includes a table of relationships as predicted by the shared DNA compared against the known generations to Isaac and Sarah. The table is also interesting in it shows where no detectable match (over 7cMs/700 SNPs) between descendants was found, such is the randomness of atDNA inheritance.
 
My DAWE family page has the updated Chromosome map included.
The page still includes the 2014 version for comparison -we ARE making progress - wonder how many are the SMITH side?.
Already at least some of the purple segments that were only potentially from the DAWE side of   William Rowe/Honor Dawe's ancestry are now identified as DAWE.

The DNASurnames table and segment traceability diagrams can only include those who have uploaded their DNA file to GEDMatch, so neither include the descendant of John DAWE (hatter in Tavistock) and wife Mary FRIEND who popped up on Ancestry as a solid match to myself (Lorna) and also has a smaller match to a descendant of Isaac and Sarah's son Thomas.
Anyone only on ancestry cannot be compared at an appropriate level of detail against the other "cousins" as Ancestry simply does not provide the tools available at either GEDMatch or FamilyTreeDNA.
It would be great to be able to see how likely it is that her John is the John baptized Whitchurch to an Isaac and Sarah.
Working on it, but real life takes priority - sometimes.

Perhaps another descendant of John and Mary might be interested enough to participate?
FamilyFinder test from FamilyTreeDNA or the Ancestry DNA test, but in either case, please upload your file to GEDMatch.
Bear in mind that we still have not definitively proven that Robert DAW in California, born Michigan and father of Mark Walton DAW (b. 1892 Oakland) is one and the same as Robert Henry DAW, son of Isaac Friend DAW who emigrated to Michigan (see prior blog post).
So ideally, descendants of any/all of those mentioned very very welcome to see what we learn about the family relationships from their DNA.

The cliffhanger

So who was John DAWE in Whitchurch the son of? (The end of my Spot the Flaw post refers)

An Isaac and Sarah DAW, where the baptism entry holds no further clues, no occupation, no residence.

Who are  my 3greats grandparents
An Isaac and Sarah DAWE / DAW.

Did I have a John in the family?
No.

Did any of the online trees readily available to check have one?
No.

How many Isaac and Sarah DAW couples around this time (or ever?) are there in this area?
The only one I know of are my lot, Isaac a miller of Newton Mill and wife Sarah SMITH.
The only other marriage that comes up on FindMyPast when searched for Isaac (with variants) DAW or DAWE between 1770 and 1810 is a Jun 1783 Halwill marriage of an Isaac DAWE and Grace PAGE, where that Isaac seems to have died in Sep, leaving Grace with an unborn son (John born the next year).
Not all the baptisms have been checked for any others showing parents as Isaac and Sarah that aren't already allocated to the family.

Can John "fit" with the existing children?
Yes.
At first glance I thought maybe not given he was baptized 1798 and their first child Isaac Smith DAWE, was baptized in 1797.
But looking at the actual baptismal dates:
Isaac Smith DAWE 31 Mar 1797
John DAW 26  Oct 1798
Sarah DAWE 15 Dec 1800 
It looks like yes he can fit.

Is this John the John who married Mary FRIEND?
Can't prove that as there are likely to be other candidates, but when the details of the ancestry DNA match can be explored on GEDMatch and compared with more than just my data we may have more of an idea about that from the DNA aspect.

Spot the flaw

"CEN: l850 Michigan, p.ll0 - DAW, William - KARO, l55R, Kalamazoo Co., Ross Township, l840 Mich..no Daw..3 Daws..no Wm. 2228/224l Wm. DAW 25 m Labouer b N.Y. Cornelia 22 f " " " John 3 m " Mich....l850 Ross Twp., census....he was the only one in the entire l850 cen., so he must be fa of Robert b after l850c. REF: Family Tree Maker: 1860 census: DAW, William - NJ P. 848 - Red Hook Twp., Dutchess Co., NJ"

Yes I'm back on a DAW(E) trail again.
Been a while, or at least it seems so.

This voyage started the other day with a new Ancestry DNA match, one with a shared ancestor hint no less.
Yes, we both have the same DAWE family in our respective trees, Isaac and Sarah (SMITH) DAWE of Lamerton (that's WikiTree, and this is my webpage link). I descend from son Isaac, my match from son Thomas.
Now if only we could see the DNA details to prove that this is where the match actually lies?
I'll have to wait for my match to upload to GEDMatch where comparisons can be made against several other kits who also descend from Isaac and Sarah.

While I wait, comparisons were made between our shared match lists and only one of interest popped up - sharing 24cMs with me but far less with my match, but previously on my alert list as there was a DAW showing in the tree. In California, recent-ish timeframe, but no ancestors shown.

Last time I explored tentative ancestors for this mysterious DAW I'd merely quickly tracked around published trees with some spot checks against census data. That led me to a Robert son of a William supposedly born in New York around the 1820s, where I lost interest.

This time round details were checked a bit more thoroughly.
Although I cannot yet document the link between a Robert DAW born Michigan, marrying and fathering a son in 1892 in California and dying before the 1900 census, and the Robert Henry in the 1870 and 1880 census records in Whitewater, Grand Traverse, Michigan, I do have a whiff of potential success.

The flaw of the title?
"...he was the only one in the entire l850 cen., so he must be fa of Robert b after l850c."
Actually two flaws. One was the assumption that Robert was born between 1850 and 1860, the other that noone could possibly have entered the State after the 1850 census and still be in contention as the candidate family.

Tweaking the search parameters for Roberts in Michigan born around the same time as his Californian wife (about 1865) brought up what looks like gold.
There, in 1870, is a family of an Isaac and Nellie (actually should be Nettie) DAW, both born England.
My genie radar is fairly finely attuned to mentions of Isaac DAW(E)s of England anywhere in the world. My tree abounds in the blighters. And very hard to distinguish they can be too sometimes.
Luckily this one had a handy death certificate, which only looks to have a couple of small errors - mother's name missing an I (FREND instead of FRIEND), and a couple of years out on a birth date.
BUT it did have the gem of saying that Isaac was born in Tavistock. Which my radar is doubly attuned to in association with DAW(E)s.
Sure enough there was an Isaac Friend DAW being baptized in Tavistock to a John and Mary, and a handy set of banns several years prior showing a John DAW, hatter, marrying a Mary FRIEND.

I was already quite excited by all of this, nothing like the whiff of success and dots being joined.
But who was John?
Luckily for me, unhappily for the family, there was a sad little set of records showing a baptism in 1832 of a Mary Sarah Jane, daughter of "the late John DAW, hatter, and Mary his wife".
Which made it rather easy to spot John's burial record a few months prior.
Same street address as on Mary Sarah Jane's baptism, and an age that placed him as born around 1799. But where? And which John?
Nothing suitable in Tavistock presented itself. So I tried the Whitchurch John, baptized in Oct 1798 - to ......
The next post may reveal all :)
I'm still convincing myself of the dots being joined here.

Importance of checking the originals!

A review of some early DAWE research has led to a change of tack for the family of Richard, son of Gregory NICHOLAS and Sarah DAWE.
I had this Richard married to Henrietta RALPH and they've been sitting in my database as a family for some years now.
Always pays to review past research, AND to check original records to corroborate the census data and indexes.
The NICHOLAS families of Whitchurch do seem to specialise in reusing first names and having children of the same names and ages. They've taken a bit of untangling, not just Richard.

Richard's wife looks more like she'll turn out to be the Sarah BIDGOOD living next door to Richard's uncle in the 1841 census, and possibly related to his aunt Joan's husband Abraham BIDGOOD or TURNER. 
The marriage cert. showed his parents as Richard NICHOLAS, blacksmith, instead of the expected Gregory.

The above, plus time to review all the (overdue) pending updates to the family tree on the web, mean that my main webpages (Big Brother) have been republished, and an update to WorldConnect database LornaHenderson is in process.

Parents with a sense of humour?

Who needs them?
Having found yet another Family Finder DNA match amongst my Devonshire DAWEs, I've been checking off my data to upload a few more of my DAWE family to WikiTree.
Checking the marriage of Charles FLOOD I found his father was one Noah FLOOD.
Back at the  turn of the 19th Century when Noah would have been growing up, I wonder if he was teased unmercifully?

The newly identified Family Finder DNA match is the second descendant of Isaac & Sarah (SMITH) DAWE's son William DAWE who is a match to 3 of the descendants of William's brother Isaac Smith DAWE so we have some DAWE, or SMITH, autosomal DNA that has survived down to present day over 6 generations.

If at first you don't succeed ...

Don't give up.
Take a break.
Attack from a different angle next time.

This post is being prompted by finally finding a family in the 1901 Canadian census.

Sampson DAWE died in Toronto in 1908. My prior sighting of him was in the 1891 census, so he had to be somewhere in 1901.

I'd obviously not tried hard enough, as he should have been findable on a first name, birth date, spouse name search, but no, given what is now apparent.

A helpful researcher in Toronto had fed me some additional snippets for the family and it was time to input them, and try again to fill in the gaps.

I'd missed an additional son for the family, which isn't surprising given how his birth was indexed.

John Darde Stakes
Father's Name: Sampson Hurst Dame
Mother's Name: Maria Stakes


She had also found Maria and son John S DAWE in Edmonton in 1916.

Back to the 1901 census.
This time I tried searching for Maria instead of Sampson.
She would probably still be on my missing in action list if they hadn't just happened to be living with Maria's mother!
Sampson is indexed as Thompson, the DAWE family is indexed as JAIVE, but Maria is shown as daughter of Marrie STOKES, and thus indexed both as JAIVE and as STOKES. Bingo.
Corrections have been lodged.

Check the witnesses

Something drew me back to a branch of my DAWE family that emigrated to Quebec.
I'd not found anything conclusive about them after the 1881 census of Montreal.
This time round the Drouin collection showed an Emma Elizabeth DAWE marrying an Alexander COWAN in Montreal in 1890. unlike several marriage entries her parents weren't listed, and as I didn't have an Elizabeth in her name, the identification was tentative.
Witnesses: J A & Katie SMART.
That sounded familiar.
Back in 1881 a lodger in the household was one Julius SMART.
Took a few short searches of the Drouin collection to turn up a marriage of Emma's sister, Catherine Thomasine Mary DAWE, shown as daughter of Nathaniel DAWE & Catherine nee WATTS, witnesses Nathaniel DAWE, and Isaac Nathaniel DAWE (Catherine's father and brother).
So at least father, sister, and one brother Nathaniel had all survived beyond 1881.
Subsequently Catherine and Julius SMART & family, have been found up to 1911, parents Nathaniel and Catherine, with son Isaac were found in 1891, indexed on ancestry as DANE, then parents in 1901, but not a sign yet to be found of Alexander and Emma Elizabeth COWAN after their 1890 marriage - anyone know what happened to them?

Making doubly sure?

Still plugging away on the DAWE families of Sth West Devon, many descendants of whom are descendants of my KING and BARTER ancestors.
Many of the KING/BARTER rellies have now been better documented as a result of this exercise, which has highlighted, yet again, how inter-related many of these families are!

Today's intriguing find is a couple who appear to have married twice within a month - and no it doesn't look like banns in both parishes.

Mary Maria Pitt GILES and William SPURRELL are indexed as marrying in Devonport, with the FindMyPast transcription showing this was 22 Oct 1913 at St John's.
FamilySearch has the image of a marriage licence in Cook Co., Illinois of a 36 yr old William SPURRELL of Chicago marrying a 33 yrs Mary Maria Pitt GILES on 11th Nov 1913!
In between there's an passenger list into Montreal on 5th Nov 1913 showing William, 36, and Mary,  33, as SPURRELL, both "married", with William's children, William and Joseph, from his prior marriage (which children are with their grandparents in Wembury in the 1911 census).
 

Have you considered...

FamilyTree DNA have announced another good round of test discounts.
Details available on the DNASurnames project diary where the list of projects I have an interest in may also be found.
Direct male line descendants of my DAWE, WIGHT, & FAMILTON lines are particularly wanted.
Happy to explain how this is a painless, harmless process that will enhance our knowledge of the families concerned - contact details in footers of most pages.
We've had great successes with the RUNCIMAN and FAIRBAIRN projects.
Some links that may help explain dna testing for genealogy can be found on my Lorna Genie site.

Fewer DAWEs

Well, fewer DAWE trees on my DAWE page anyway.
Some of the Buckland Monachorum DAWEs were kind enough to leave wills that have survived.
One is that of Betty DAWE nee SCOBEL, widow of William DAWE of Dunwood, Tamerton Foliott, to whom I had assigned the William married to Joanna ATWILL, at least until I received my copy of said will and found that by 1843 Betty was referring to her son William as "late", but kindly left his widow Hannah a bequest.
The latter hint brought the family of William & Joanna/Hannah (HUNT) DAWE in from the cold, but shifted the William married to Joanna ATWILL to the family of William & Elizabeth (WILLOCKS) DAWE instead - the Williams had both been baptized in Meavy, a few short months apart, one to William & Betty, the other to William & Elizabeth.
The William married to Joanna/Hannah had to belong to Sampson and Marina somewhere given these names featured in their children.
We now know where.
Their daughter Marina has long been in my tree as wife of Henry DAWE, a descendant of both my BARTER and KING lines from the area. I calculate that this new connection makes them 3rd cousins.

More DAWEs & a RUNCIMAN rethink

The rather inter-twined DAWEs of South West Devon have had another update, as has the Patriarch page for the DAWE Surname DNA project where DNA oriented pedigrees lurk awaiting a direct male line DAWE interested enough in his family tree to donate a little bit of himself to history.

With that "little" project almost out of the way for now, there should be some time for attention to shift back to the RUNCIMANs where there has been an exciting bit of research by Phyllis and Alan who visited the Scottish Archives and finally found how the Richard who brought up William of Crail's orphaned children was related - he was their grandfather.
Back to the drawing board on how to connect up those dna matched trees !
Current favourite, and at the moment the only candidate available from readily available records, is the Richard married to Jennet GOURLAY, but evidence is rather sparse - or we'd have found it long ago.

Visitation of God, with Milwaukee for a bit of variety

Still flip-flopping between Devon and Australia on the extended DAWE families of South West Devon.
Had to shift one Henry DAWE from one family to the other on a bit of digging. I'd assumed he was an undocumented  brother of the Sampson and William at Willunga, but it looks rather more like he was a "cousin" instead. Not yet fully proven. His headstone shown on the Australian Cemetery Index shows him as "of Tamerton", which is indeed where the family that provided the other Willunga brothers, sons of Sampson & Jenny (MADDOCK) DAWE, lived, but so did that of John & Elizabeth (RUNDELL) DAWE, moving there from Coomb Hill, Sampford Spiney. The latter have a documented Henry of the right age. Some published family trees show him belonging to one, some to the other.
Did love the Coroner's verdict for Henry's unexpected death, as reported on Trove in the South Australian -  " Died by the Visitation of God".
The Milwaukee connection above is for yet another Samspon, married Mary Ann FUGE. A couple of trees confuse him with the Stoke Fleming Sampson (who married Catherine Henwood ROWE). Exactly how the Milwaukee one connects to the grandparents he is with in 1861 and 1871, William & Mary Ann (?HORN?, ?CONWAY?) DAWE at Hecklake in Whitchurch has yet to be found, but regardless, he emigrated to Milwaukee in 1893, wife and children following in 1897.
The trees on my DAWE page have been tidied up still futher, as several more linkages between families have now been confirmed.

And back to Australia

The DAWE activity continues.
Several of the Devon trees have been tidied up and assorted Sampsons have now found their rightful homes.
One I'd not found in English census records turned up in a Sth Australian cemetery.
My DAWE page has been updated, including another of the interconnected trees, that of William & Johanna Hannah (HUNT) DAWE - who have a Newfoundland connection in their tree.

From Australia back to Devon

The activity on the Australian DAWE descendants of the Buckland Monachorum family of Sampson & Joan (BLANCHARD) DAWE reminded me of my trip to Devon in 2006.
Many photos were taken, many still await processing, most are of headstones, not scenic spots.
Those from Buckland Monachorum were the DAWE headstones in that churchyard, and have now been incorporated on my website.
To access them, go to the Places tab, scroll down to DEV, Buckland Monachorum and click on the little information icon

At the time I was probably taking the photos on spec rather than in the knowledge of where, or, they fitted into my family tree.
Some do, some don't, as it turned out, none are known to be from my direct DAWE line, despite what some online trees say (see prior post about his topic, enthusiasm vs accuracy), but are mostly descendants of James BARTER, or married to them.

Australian DAWEs

Their time has obviously come, again.
A descendant of Isaac DAWE, miller in Tasmania, had popped out of the woodwork a few weeks ago and some updates eventuated to that line, that from second wife Emily GREEN.

Just last week a MyHeritage SmartMatch popped up a TREMBATH/BROTHERAS researcher claiming another of my Isaac DAWs in Australia as marrying Elizabeth Ann BROTHERAS, nee TREMBATH in Cue, Western Australia.
This Isaac was one down the line from my Isaac, miller of Lumburn, Tavistock's brother William (married Mary WAY).
Two surprises here for me,  marriage and Western Australia!
Other researchers may  be well ahead of me here, but I had him has unmarried, born and dying in Victoria!
The information checks out, so Isaac has been included on my webpages for others to see the connections.
The wonderful newspapers online at Trove hint that maybe  Isaac's parents and some siblings also headed for Western Australia at some stage - not yet confirmed that "DAW and family" on the same voyage as Isaac is them however.

And then yesterday another heap of MyHeritage DAWE SmartMatches popped out of the woodwork, from yet another DAWE in Australia, Western Australia even.
These DAWE matches however turned out to be for the descendants of Joseph DAWE & Elizabeth CROSSMAN of Buckland Monachorum, no connection currently proven to my DAWEs above, but the trees are interconnected several times over via other families, such as my BARTERs and WILLCOCKs.

The DAWE DNA project would love to explore whether or not there is a connection between these South West Devon families, so are still looking for any direct male line DAWE descendants of any of these families willing to give it a try.

As a result of the above I've updated my DAWE page and added pages for:

• John DAW of North Lew (to document the erroneous link that several trees make between the two above DAWE trees)
• John DAWE of Yeoland, the John some trees give as the father of my Isaac DAWE, and is where at least one of my connections to his DAWE line begins, and
• Elizabeth KING, wife of John DAWE of Yeoland