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.

The value of contacts

Love it when people get in touch.
Makes me review areas of the database that haven't been touched for quite some time.

The HENDERSON descendant chart has been updated to include a few more of the descendants of Margaret McGREGOR nee HENDERSON, the HEIGHTs of Nova Scotia and Connecticut ++.
Thank you Roger for contacting me because of a 2007 post to see if I was still interested in his grandparents - Alden Elkiney HEIGHT and Christine Addison McGREGOR.
Most definitely still interested, look forward to some updates.

As the Recent Changes index shows the family of David & Jane (HERD) FAIRBAIRN has also been updated as a result of the earlier mentioned contact.  David's page has been tweaked to include his naturalization, and land holdings in Wisconsin from the now more readily available information, and Robert Herd FAIRBAIRN's  family has been expanded thanks to Veronica.

Surrogate's Court Notice

What a wonderful happenstance find today.
Dick Eastman's newsletter mentioned the Fulton History site and its newspapers.
So I popped in a search for FAIRBAIRN and Delaware to see what would pop out.
By some miracle of modern technology, one of the items I got was a Surrogate's Court Notice for a list of people, presumed to be beneficiaries of Barbara FAIRBAIRN otherwise known as FAIRCHILD, requesting their attendance at the probate of her last will and testament.
Managed to identify everyone listed, and as a result, also realised I'd not found some of them in later records.
The family of Thomas & Anna SCOTT have now advanced to 1920 for Anna and two of the daughters (Vernona/Verona, and Beatrice) but lost them all again after that. Also added a husband and child for Viola (George C and Kenneth G HINMAN respectively) by the 1930 census. In the 1910 census George says he's been married 4 times, in 1930 he says he was first married at age 28, which makes him marrying 4 times between about 1906 and 1910. And in what looks like his death in Connecticut in 1950 the index says "never married", but wife Viola's death in 1964 shows her as widower, husband George.
Nothing like a good mystery - anyone out there interested in George C HINMAN, born NY about 1875/8, foreman in sewing machine factory. Parents either both b NY, or father b CT, mother b PA.