Ancestry discoveries

**Pleater** · 8th February 15, 12:24 PM

The ancestry website has free access to their records this weekend, so I decided to have a look for my family.

It seems that my father is from a long line of illiterate hand loom weavers in the linen trade, in Barnsley in the West Riding of Yorkshire, and on my mother's side there is a bigamist milkman and then a dead end as no one seems to have had a father, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

However - after looking up a few records of deaths it looks as though I am from sturdy stock - I could not look up many as there are so many dead babies listed - there were my ancestors, living into their 70s and 80s and then so many with the same surname and a 0 after their name.

Anne the Pleater :ootd:

**Bluescelt** · 8th February 15, 12:50 PM

No matter what you find it's nice to something about your ancestors. I always enjoy watching tv shows like "Who do you think you are" and "Genealogy roadshow" when the participants find out about their families.

**cessna152towser** · 8th February 15, 01:07 PM

The more you delve into it the more fascinating the genealogy research becomes. I've just been parcelling up a saliva sample this afternoon to send to someone in USA for DNA testing as he believes we are both descended from the same 4xgreat grandparents who were married in Glasgow in 1763. We believe the couple were born in Lesmahagow, Lanarkshire in 1738 and 1742. The husband became a soldier in the Lanark Militia, who had their barracks in Glasgow in 1763. The wife's grandfather owned a farm so they would have had access to horses to take the bride and her dad to Glasgow for the wedding, a journey of 26 miles which would have been a full day's trek two hundred and fifty years ago.

**ljamieson** · 8th February 15, 01:46 PM

I'm going deep. I just ordered this, and I'm pretty excited about it.

https://www.familytreedna.com/group-...roup=Gunn_Sept

**Rick Y** · 8th February 15, 07:29 PM

Originally Posted by ljamieson

I'm going deep. I just ordered this, and I'm pretty excited about it.

https://www.familytreedna.com/group-...roup=Gunn_Sept

I just returned the Y -DNA 37. Probably be a couple months at least to learn anything.

**MacGumerait** · 8th February 15, 11:56 PM

Originally Posted by Pleater

on my mother's side there is a bigamist milkman
Anne the Pleater :ootd:

Anne , I wouldn't get too concerned on that discovery .

Milkmen here in the U.S. have long had a similar reputation .

Cheers , Mike

**Pleater** · 9th February 15, 05:10 AM

I have met a mother and daughter from the other family - they were living only a few miles away from me. It was the older members of the family who got upset - the daughters of the milkman, old enough to regard being illegitimate as a dreadful thing.

My new cousins are so like other family members, and both have the slight lisp which is such a feature in the Tuvey bloodline. One of my cousins up in Yorkshire was very sceptical about it all, as there were name changes and lies about age to muddy the waters, but the family likeness is so strong that even without the photos and a few other bits and pieces which confirm the connection for me I accepted them as soon as I met them.

There is a mystery about my maternal line still to be resolved - I can find my great grandmother's marriage but she seems to come from nowhere, there is no trace of her under the surname she gave her illegitimate daughter, my grandmother who 'married' the milkman.

I am not concerned about the goings on - I was born only a few weeks after my parents married, and in most of the marriages I turned up the first child was born under six months later, but it was the way that it was such a scandal and had to be hidden. For the whole of her married life my mother pretended that the marriage took place a year earlier than it did.

On my paternal side the line was easy to trace back 200 years as each generation was born in the same place as the last and they worked in the local trades and factories the town is known for, linen weaving, 'driving' a steam engine for a saw mill and then at the glass works before my tiny granddad was apprenticed as a hair dresser. He was so small that he didn't serve in the Great War, being several inches under five feet tall.

I know that my father's family have to have roots across the North sea as he and my brother have the contraction of the tendons in their hands which is associated with descendants of the Vikings, but I am more interested in the people themselves, and have scoured the census records for addresses, employment, family names and maiden names - and found a lot of misspellings and misreading of handwriting.

Anne the Pleater :ootd:

**cessna152towser** · 9th February 15, 05:40 AM

People do seem to "come from nowhere" Anne.
When I started researching my Cunningham lineage for my petition to the Lord Lyon for recognition as an Armiger, I only just succeeded in proving the minimum to satisfy the Lord Lyon. I got stuck at Great-Great-Grandfather Alexander Cunningham who died in 1867, allegedly aged 56. I'd always been told by my father that the reason he kept an 1818 shilling was because his great grandfather was born in that year. I found there was indeed an Alexander Cunningham born in our home town in 1818 but he appeared to be a different family. Census records for my ancestor were conflicting about where he had been born but all seemed to agree he was born about 1811. There was no record of an Alexander Cunningham born around 1811 or a year or two either side. His death certificate listed an Andrew Cunningham and a Mary Spier as his parents, and a couple of that name had indeed married in Paisley in January 1794. They baptised a daughter Lilias in October 1794 but there are no records of them having any other children. I might assume that perhaps my ancestor born 1811 was the illegitimate daughter of Lilias, and was raised by his grandparents but there is no proof.

**Father Bill** · 9th February 15, 05:52 AM

A family friend used to say "The first child comes from heaven; all others take nine months."

**Stitchwiz** · 11th February 15, 06:32 PM

Originally Posted by Pleater

I know that my father's family have to have roots across the North sea as he and my brother have the contraction of the tendons in their hands which is associated with descendants of the Vikings, but I am more interested in the people themselves, and have scoured the census records for addresses, employment, family names and maiden names - and found a lot of misspellings and misreading of handwriting.

Anne the Pleater :ootd:

I'm no longer surprised to find errors in records. My mother was always a stickler for details and yet, she made a major mistake. I applied for a long form birth certificate so that I could get a new passport. I was delighted to see my mother's handwriting - they sent a photocopy of the original birth registration, which she completed and also had my fathers signature. Imagine my shock when I saw that she had misspelled her maiden name! I'm sure she had no idea that she left out a letter - she would be mortified. She was intrigued with genealogy, she was aware of how difficult it is to trace people especially when the maiden name of a woman is lost. My parents thought this through. My sisters and I have only one name so that our maiden name could become our middle name, if we so chose.

If Mom were still here, I would have a lot of fun teasing her.