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.

Sources & Lost Cousins

Thought I was quite good at noting my sources, but somehow I always miss inputting something.
Lost Cousins is completely free* this weekend (and ancestry's UK census records - registration required) so it's a good opportunity to add a few more relations, and some of the Runciman and Fairbairn families from the One Name Study and DNA project that we don't yet know where they "fit".
The very first one I went to enter from my data, I had to re-check the census entry concerned as I'd not noted all of the information necessary to enter them on Lost Cousins. At least one of the objectives of citing your sources was met, being able to find the entry again easily.

* the basic site has always been free, it is the additional contacting of relations found via the census records you have input that is also free this weekend.

Wildlife

Have you checked out the Wildlife section of my webpages lately?
I presume they were wild about something, and I'm so glad that they didn't wake me up at 6:30am to tell me why they were wandering around my section.
Wonder what on earth they expected to do with the ladder?

All power to DNA!

New FamilyFinder DNA results are being received all the time, but it is often hard to see where the connection might be between respective trees, although there has to be a link, given the dna evidence.

There was an exception this week, which, once again, highlighted the random nature of autosomal dna inheritance.
But more importantly, they brought attention back to the Mary McEWAN that had been sitting in my database for many years potentially marked as being  the daughter of James McEWAN and Mary McLAREN, and thus niece of my 3*great grandmother Margaret McEWAN.
This potential duplicate for Mary had married a William DUNCANSON and emigrated to Tasmania in 1855. Others have long ago connected the families up as one and the same, but her age didn't quite match, although census data did place her in the right places about the right times, among other candidates.

This time around I found her death entry, which squashed my qualms about her age, although no parents were indexed.
This, coupled with a dna match between a descendant of Mary's and myself, and to my third cousin once removed, both of us descendants of Margaret McEWAN, Mary's aunt, means that she has been connected up to the family and a heap of new McEWAN descendants formally welcomed to the database.

For those interested in further technical detail:
Autosomal dna (atDNA) is the part of our genetic heritage that we inherit randomly from all of our ancestors, as compared to the mitochondrial dna everyone inherits from their mothers but only daughters can pass on to their children, or to the Y-DNA that sons inherit from their fathers, passing that inheritance on to their sons in turn. Both of the latter are far more certain at surviving the transmission process from parent to child more or less intact, but the former is a bit of a lottery as to what survives from which ancestor.

We now have autosomal dna (Family Finder) results from four descendants of Archibald  & Margaret (McEWAN) HENDERSON, and now one from a descendant of Margaret's brother James.

The only match that showed initially on Family Tree DNA, at the default settings, was between myself and my second cousin.  Disappointingly no match shows up between myself and another descendant of our shared James and Amelia (MILLAR) HENDERSON, nor between any of us to the descendant of James' sister Margaret, although the latter was not entirely unexpected. This sort of test is really only expected to detect significant matches back to a shared 4-6 generations ago, so it's always a bonus to find a match further back.

Further exploration via GedMatch, where the parameters may be tweaked, revealed that there are several matches slightly below the matching threshold used by FamilyTree DNA between at least three of us after all. Mostly between the descendant of the two Margarets, one the daughter of Archibald and Margaret (McEWAN) HENDERSON and the other the daughter of James & Amelia (MILLAR) HENDERSON. Could be completely random coincidence (called Identical by State, rather than the Identical by Descent that we are after) of course, but I prefer not to think so.

We now have this growing scientific evidence that supports our paper trails, and provides a good solid base for future matches to pinpoint where they might be from.
But it would be even better to get representatives to join the fun and add to the evidence for the less defined paper trails, those for Margaret and James' siblings William, Archibald, and John, who either emigrated themselves, or many descendants did, to Australia, America, and Canada respectively.  
I'm pinning my hopes on FamilyFinder evidence for William and John as both lines are rather short on direct male line HENDERSONs able to represent them. A Y-DNA representative  may eventually be able to be found for Archibald's line, but a FamilyFinder match would also be very welcome!

How well do you know your cousin?

Better than one of mine does possibly?
I recently uploaded a branch of the RICHARDSONs to WikiTree, three generations down from John & Elizabeth (SHIEL) RICHARDSON, and let the small group of interested parties know it was there in case they wanted to use WikiTree's excellent privacy and trust controls to connect themselves up to their ancestors.
One of them emailed me with some updates, which were duly incorporated into my own database. 
I thanked her, commenting that her dates differed in a couple of instances. 
“No my cousin’s birthday is definitely 20th October.” 
The next day, another email arrived. “I’ve just checked with my mother and found I’ve been sending my cousin her birthday card a day late my entire adult life. She’s going to be rather surprised when I finally get it right for her 50th birthday.”
Gave us both a good chuckle for the day.

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.

WikiTree & DNA

Ever since this post back in 2011 I've continued to sporadically use WikiTree.
Mainly as I "finish" a particular line and want to see what pops out, but also for research I've done for others, where they can then continue the tree on their own.

Over the last week that has been a concerted effort as my interest went up several notches.

Yes, it has always been a great collaborative site for a One World Tree,  ie everyone connected, and only appearing once (all going well!);
Yes it has always been Free;
Yes it has great privacy controls;
Yes it has a great range of navigation options - with dinky little icons for pedigrees, descendant lists etc;

Now however it has completely grabbed my attention as some tools have been added that help those of us trying to find our DNA matches.

If you've ventured into genetic genealogy and don't know where to find your matches, convince them to upload at least their pedigree to WikiTree AND enter which DNA test they've taken in the place provided (you can enter your name as Anonymous and restrict who can see what, but without a visible tree the main benefit of this may be a little compromised).

All the people impacted by the test will get a link posted against their profile (= page = person) saying It may be possible to confirm family relationships with (person x) by comparing against (link to test taker's name) (link to the test taken) test.

Read this article about which of the affected relations get the note added to them.

With the randomness of autosomal dna inheritance being explored using tests such as FamilyFinder (Family Tree DNA) or 23andme, anything that helps find where a match might be is most welcome.
None of this shows actual DNA results, only family tree connections with links to test taker and those impacted. It is up to you how much more you wish to share, eg in the free text biography section.

Even if you aren't interested in the DNA results, the note draws attention to possible newfound relations on a branch one or other of you may not have.

PS if thinking about venturing into genetic genealogy, now's a great time, Family Tree DNA are having a summer sale - details on my DNASurnames Blog.