Week 47: "This Ancestor stayed home ....." #52Ancestorsin52Weeks

My direct ancestry is not at all exotic. Although my percentage ethnicities do vary a bit from one testing company to another, one thing is clear: I am very, very Scottish. 23andme have me as 99.5% Scottish/Irish, Ancestry at 71% Scottish, 27% Irish. The Irish I know comes to me through one 2 x great grandmother on my maternal side and one 3 x great grandmother on my paternal side. I do have one 3 x great grandfather who was English, but everywhere else you look on my tree it is Scotland all the way, and Central Scotland at that too. All my direct ancestors for the last two hundred years are all Lanarkshire born!

It appears that my ancestors were quite happy to stay in Scotland, only moving relatively locally to improve their chances of work. The coalfields of Lanarkshire proved an attractive prospect for people who had been iron workers and general labourers. The cotton mills also provided work for many of them. These people benefited from the start of the Industrial Revolution and never needed or wanted to go elsewhere.

However, when you look at my DNA matches, you find I have a lot of 'cousins' in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the eastern part of the USA. These 'cousins' are the descendants of my direct ancestor's siblings, who decided not to stay 'at home' but to leave. These were the ones who were not content to stay in Scotland. Although there were a few single men who left, most were men with a wife and family seeking a better life for them in another land.

One such person was John Young. Born in Coatbridge, Lanarkshire in 1863, he followed his father's occupation and became a joiner/carpenter. He emigrated to Canada in 1910, not as a young man but at the age of 47 with his wife and children, where he settled in Toronto. In the 1921 census he is living in a semi detached house, described as 'owned', so John, like many other emigrants did better than the siblings who stayed home. Siblings of other direct ancestors, be they labourers, miners, farmers or grocers, all took their chances with their families seeking out new lives in countries far from home.

But, for whatever reason, those men and women in my direct line all remained in Central Scotland, even as they watched their siblings leave, knowing they might never see them again. Were they just content with their lot? Were they the unadventurous ones? I'll never know.

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