Skip to main content

Week 23: So Many Descendants #52Ancestorsin52Weeks

 Much of the time I spend on genealogy involves me working on my DNA matches to find out how we are related.  It is something I take a great deal of pleasure in and find really rewarding. Among the many thousands of matches I have, I have been able to identify hundreds of them - assigning them initially as a paternal or maternal line match, then to a specific line:


... and hopefully then on to the common ancestor or ancestral couple.

But there is one group which eludes me - for the moment! - since, as yet, I have been unable to find how my tree links into the common ancestors they all share. This is the group whose common ancestral couple have left so many descendants and there is a very good reason for that.

So far, as you can see, I have identified 77 of my matches on Ancestry as belonging to this group, but there are many, many more. I managed to work out that these people match me on the maternal side of my family. Have I managed to find out which line yet? No. Have I managed to find out anything? Yes. All these matches descend from a Scottish couple, Thomas Archibald and Elizabeth Russell. Thomas was born in Inveresk in 1813, Elizabeth in Shotts Parish in 1817.  Should it be easy to find the connection? I thought so! I have family lines in and around Shotts. I also have three different Russell families in my tree, two on my maternal side. A little bit more research around those families, and that of Thomas Archibald too, and I should be able to work it all out. But .... as yet, I haven't.
So .. to return to the topic of "So many descendants", I am going to focus on that 'unknown' couple, especially on Elizabeth Russell. 
Elizabeth Russell 1817-1908
Born on a farm in Shotts Parish, Elizabeth married Thomas Archibald when she was 17. The couple went on to have ten children, one of whom later died. In 1848, having heard the missionaries from the Church of Latter Day Saints (Mormons) preaching in her home area, Elizabeth and Thomas were baptised into that church. Eight years later Thomas died, leaving Elizabeth a widow with nine children. She then made the decision to travel with her children, three of whom were already married, to Utah in America.  After a harsh journey, they all arrived in Utah in 1862.
Her children were also baptised into the LDS Church. In those days, the LDS Church allowed polygamy - men could have more than one wife. Her son William Russell Archibald had two wives - Elizabeth Halliday with whom he had 14 children and Catherine Stewart with whom he had 11 children.  So 24 grand children from one son alone. In actual fact, by the time Elizabeth died at the age of 91 in 1908, she had had 10 children, 118 grand children, 277 great grandchildren and 22 great great grandchildren!!!!! Needless to say a lot has been written about this matriarch.
And.... we mustn't forget that it is her descendants who are my unknown 'Archibald' group DNA matches. Either she or her husband or their parents/grandparents must fit into my tree somehow. If the link is a half-sibling or there is an illegitimacy somewhere, I may never find out how I am related to Elizabeth Russell, a Scotswoman with so many descendants. I will, however, keep trying.


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Week 50: You wouldn't believe it! #52Ancestorsin52Weeks

I have already written about my 3 x great uncle, James McAra, who was sentenced to deportation at the High Court in Edinburgh in 1811. His crime had been to attack his brother, my 3 x great grandfather, Alexander, with an iron bar during an argument, with Alexander being badly hurt and dying a few days later. James was an iron worker by trade in Scotland and continued this trade in the small town of Sorell in Tasmania.  We cannot know much about the life he led in Sorell, but he is mentioned in a variety of documents. For example we know he was given a Free Pardon by the Governor of Tasmania and New South Wales in 1836. He also acquired some land in 1839, which, in his Will, he left to daughters of a friend. We know his affection for 'drink', which had led to the fatal fight back in Scotland, never left him as 'excessive drinking' was given as cause of death on his death certificate. However his tombstone bears witness to the fact he was well-liked and a 'good and h
2 comments
Read more

2024 Week 14: Favourite recipe #52Ancestorsin52Weeks

So, despite the heading, I'm not going to write about a favourite recipe that an ancestor has passed down to me, simply because there isn't one. What or rather whom I'm going to write about is my mum, Helen Anderson, who absolutely loved baking. And it is this love of baking that has been passed on to me. My mum. My mum was always baking. Like most children, I got allowed to 'lick the spoon' and taste the raw cake mixture. I got to learn to how to make crispie cakes. I watched how to make pancakes and enjoyed getting the first ones off the pan. I took in helpful baking hints like 'half fat to flour' for pastry or ' 4 4 4 plus 2' for the measurements of flour, sugar,  butter and eggs needed for a sponge cake or little butterfly cakes.  She had learned how to bake from her mother, as many women in her generation had done. There was always something 'in the tin' should a friend or neighbour pop in for a cup of tea. But she didn't just bake f
Post a Comment
Read more

2024 Week 43: Lost contact #52Ancestorsin52Weeks

 When we research our ancestors and their families, it is all to easy to become a collector of names, dates and places. After all, we want to 'know' who they were and where they lived and when, in order to get a glimpse into what their life was like. We look for photographs of our most recent ancestors to see what they looked like. We trawl censuses, Poor Law Applications, Wills and Testaments to get some detail about their rank in society, their jobs, their financial circumstances. We discover their families, the children they had, the children they lost. We may read their obituaries and gravestones and scan their death certificates for cause of death. Through research, we can slowly start to build up a picture of them, a notion that we know 'who they were'. But something will usually elude us - we will never truly know their feelings/emotions, even if we know the key moments in their lives. Take my grandmother, Christina, who lost her first four children and then anot
4 comments
Read more