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

16th: The power of mtDNA

For all my work on Surname dna projects, which by their very nature concentrate on the Y chromosome and direct male lineages, mtDNA has really paid off in the extended DAWE family.
Back in Feb 2009, Anne, the wife one of my (many) DAWE relations, contacted me as I she had been contacted by Tim Lycett of the Fromelles project asking about a Leslie LEISTER aka Jack W(alsh) WHITEMAN.
(the link probably still shows Leslie as the son of his adopted parents, his uncle and aunt Robert Watson Donald LEISTER and Elizabeth WAY)

Tim believed, after extensive research, that his Fromelles database mystery Jack WALSH was probably Leslie LEISTER, the son of Sarah Jane Way born after her husband Robert Henry Whiteman had died and shortly before she married John Young in 1894.

The Fromelles project needed mtDNA candidates that should prove a match to Leslie aka Jack, of which we had at least one genealogist in the family immediately identified (who agreed).
In the time between then and now Leslie aka Jack's short life (he died aged 22 in 1916) has been further researched, and closer relatives tracked down, with Anne keeping us all posted on progress.

Today, emails have been flying with notification that despite the great odds against any of the bodies in the mass grave at Fromelles being able to ever be identified, Leslie's has (one of 75 identified so far).
We have a mtDNA match with direct female line descendants of Sarah DAWE (daughter of William Smith DAWE and Mary WAY).
Quoting Tim in an email to us all:
"I have to say that finding out Leslie (aka Jack) has been identified has provided me with the greatest sense of satisfaction of all.

Virtually everyone in 'officialdom' had given up hope due to the fact that he was adopted and given a new name but we were determined to do our best. It took months of hard slog and lateral thinking to sort it out and with the wonderful assistance from yourselves, we have finally been able to give him back his identity."

Leslie LEISTER aka Jack Walsh WHITEMAN, (13 Aug 1894 - 20 Jul 1916) R.I.P.