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.

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.

11th: BIDGOODs

Contact from a Ross in Australia asking what I knew about the Richard BIDGOODs in my tree.
He had a Richard, supposedly from New Jersey, and 2nd son of a Richard BIDGOOD to try and track, and the nearest candidates in his search were my extended BIDGOOD family there.
Not that there was a Richard, 2nd son of a Richard, in the expected timeframe to marry in Australia in 1884.
Nearest was Richard son of Jacob, who had not been traced in America beyond 1880.
As the 1900 census implied 3 of Jacob and Jane's children had died by then, that may have been his fate.
Not so.
With all the records now available on FamilySearch I was able to identify several births, marriages and deaths for the family from the New Jersey records indexed there, and Richard wasn't amongst them.
However, the Australian chap being investigated was several years older, although well within the normal error rate for forgetful ancestors who never seem to know their ages, and there were still rather too many unanswered questions.
Although Ross is still none the wiser, the Richard son of Jacob and Jane does look to have survived, and continued living in New Jersey as I found a mis-indexed record (as MEYER !!), in the 1900, and subsequent, censuses for Rockaway, New Jersey.
Thankfully a daughter was indexed correctly as BIDGOOD, which helped find him.
Several new twigs will therefore appear in my next WorldConnect db update, which should be soon.
Related names that have turned up in this bout of research include a wonderfully named Seaman Garfield DOGGETT, with son Seaman Leroy DOGGETT.

This activity did make me realise that I hadn't tracked several of the family still in the UK in the 1911 census.
This time round, I've found a few wills and deaths, included one registered Lanchester (Durham), indexed as Lancaster!

Aug 15th, 2007: BIDGOOD, BARNFATHER, SCOTT

A day for the Bs (mostly).

On library duty for the local Kapiti Genealogy Society and had time to do a bit of checking for myself.

Several of the BARNFATHER family in Victoria, AUS have had marriage years added, also some birth and dth years confirmed/updated. No surprises.

And an email from a descendant of Fred BIDGOOD of Bayonne, New Jersey has provided some updates to her line (thanks Wendy). Always good to know that a potential census match I’d found was the right one. Subsequent family events have been recorded in Ohio (Fred’s dth) and San Diego (wife Isabel’s dth).

One snippet for the SCOTT (RICHARDSON) family (1918 dth of James Richardson SCOTT, s/o David and Margaret (RICHARDSON) SCOTT). My helper hasn’t been able to find the dths of his siblings, Robert R and Thomas Alston SCOTT in Scotland. Wonder where the Alston bit of the name comes from? This James R SCOTT was a 9 yr old visitor with a Hugh & Christian ALSTON in 1861.

Was debating with myself about whether or not to continue in parallel with the WhatChanged where the data is searchable and scrollable for up to 6mths worth of data at once, compared to individual messages only able to be filtered via the label search facility. And won. Given no messages are actually stored on my servers, only the templates and indices, I think I want belts and braces and will keep both going.

Thanks to Linda, the fate of John BLAIR, husband of Helen Margaret Dewar McGREGOR, one of the HENDERSON descendants, has been brought forward from a last sighting in 1874 up to 1901, with a new wife and another family, his first wife and child having died.