Skip to main content

Week 34: Newest discovery #52Ancestorsin52Weeks

Occasionally when you are researching one thing, you come across something or someone you didn't expect. 

I am still trying to pin down how I am related to the huge group of Mormon matches I wrote about in Week 23. (https://rootsshootsandstories.blogspot.com/2023/06/week-23-so-many-descendants.html).  I know they are connected to my maternal side and, with that in mind, I was reviewing the DNA matches of my maternal first cousin, Karen. Karen's dad David was my mum's brother. Looking through her paternal matches, I hoped to find someone who might link to research I had already done on my matches. So... imagine my surprise when I saw a name I recognised!

The name of this match was familiar to me, not because I had come across it in my own list of matches, but because it was the name of someone I personally know, a lady named Tracey. I know her because I was her French teacher and years later we became teaching colleagues!!

So, now I have another puzzle to research - finding out how Tracey and I are related. All I know is the connection is on Tracey's maternal line.  My cousin Karen and Tracey share no other matches on Ancestry, so it is back to good old fashioned genealogy to find the link. To that end, I've started building Tracey's tree.

There really is no end to where your research can lead you. Every new discovery just opens up a new door.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

2024 Week 19: Preserve #52Ancestorsin52Weeks

 A few years ago, I came into the possession of a family bible. It was the family bible of my paternal grandparents, John McAra and Christina Walker. Until her death in 2018, the bible had been in the hands of my Aunt Inez, widow of my Uncle Will McAra. When I started enquiring as to its whereabouts, I found that it was her grandson, John, who now had it. John himself had no real interest in it at all, so he was quite happy to hand it over to me. However, it was, to say the least, in a bit of a state. The front cover was completely detached and there were many loose pages as the spine of the book was also damaged and detached. I had no choice but to take it to a book repairer in Glasgow, where it was repaired as best it could be. The bible itself had been originally published in Glasgow in the late 19th century. In Victorian times it was common for Christian families to have such a large bible in which they could record events such as births, marriages and deaths. The one I have al...

2026 Week 2: A record which adds colour #52Ancestorsin52Weeks

My husband's paternal grandmother, Janina Ciupka, was born in 1902 in a small town, Nieszawa, north of Warsaw, Poland, on the banks of the River Vistula. She was the youngest of 12 children, only 8 of whom survived to adulthood. At this time Poland had been occupied by their three neighbours, Germany, Russia and Austria and Warsaw was under Russian control.  Her family were very wealthy, owning granaries, bakeries, brick factories and carriage factories and they also bred white horses for the Russian Tzars. As with her elder siblings, Janina was taught by a private governess and the family had many servants, including cooks and cleaners. She obviously was leading a very privileged life. There was little known about the  period of her life from about 1909-1919, The family had moved south eastwards to Haczow around 1909. The reasons for the move seems to have been a combination of business and politics, as Haczow was under Austrian rule, considered more liberal than that of the ...

2026 Week 1: An ancestor I admire #52Ancestorsin52weeks

 My mum, Helen Young Anderson was born on the 27th of June 1915, the second eldest daughter of John Anderson and Margaret Keir Adams. Her father John had originally worked as a tinsmith and was a steelworker at the time of my mum's birth, an occupation that had exempted him from serving in WW1. John and Margaret had only married four months before my mum was born and their ceremony, conducted at Hope Street Registry Office in Glasgow was an 'irregular marriage', one not conducted by a church minister (and therefore not approved by the Church) but one the Church accepted as alternative to a couple 'living in sin'. The reason for this probably being that Margaret was already pregnant with my mum and had already had another child by John, my aunt Meg, who by this time was six years old, being brought up by Margaret's parents, my great grandparents, James Adams and Margaret Keir. John and Margaret went on to have three more children over the next eight years - Anne,...