Roots, shoots and stories

My direct ancestors on both sides of my family mainly stayed in the area of Scotland where they were born. Those that did move away tended not to move too far, staying in the neighbouring parishes or counties. However, their siblings tended to be more adventurous! The exceptions to this are my two Irish ancestors - a 2 x great grandmother and a 3 x great grandmother, about whom I've written before, (see  Irish ancestors ), my 3 x great grandfather Joseph Gregory who moved from England to Scotland, and those who moved temporarily for work from Scotland to England like my great grandfather, John McAra (1827-1910) John McAra was an iron puddler by trade and shortly after he was married he moved, presumably with his wife, and spent the best part of ten years working down in Durham in the north of England in the iron and steel industry there, before moving back to where he he was born in Lanarkshire. His two daughters were born in Durham and his one surviving son, my grandfather, was bo...

 Although we have no historic diaries in the family, we are in possession of letters sent by Janina Stepek, my husband's grandmother, from the slave labour camp in Siberia, where she and her children had been taken by the Soviet Red Army from their home in Poland in 1940. Dated 22 May 1940, Janina wrote the following to her husband, Wladyslaw, two months after they had arrived in the labour camp: " Henrik ( Janina's brother )  wrote from Lwow. He thought you'd have received a letter from him by now explaining what happened to us. We are all alive, but I'm already down to 50 kilograms ( Janina had lost a third of her weight in three months ). We were taken away on the tenth of February and arrived at this camp on the tenth of March. We are 450 kilometres from Archangel. I can't write about everything as you can imagine the situation here. How are you? I hope you are coping." We have another letter Janina sent to her husband in the August of the same year: ...

 You never know what you will find when you are researching. Fortunately my 'surprises' have been good ones. My friend Allison, like me, has been researching her family history since the 1980s. We even knew each other back then! However, it was only recently that we both got a big surprise - and found that we are related. Allison is my fourth cousin once removed, with our common ancestors being James Sommerville and Mary Telfer, my fourth great grandparents and Allison's third great grandparents. It was fun to find that out, especially since our children grew up together as well and now find out that they are 'cousins'. We do not seem to share any DNA however. DNA research threw up another surprise a few years ago. I had been researching my friend Margaret's unknown set of grandparents (her father had been adopted at birth). During the course of that research, I found that we had a shared DNA match in common! We are not related to each other in any way, but ther...

 I have previously written about a huge group of DNA matches that I am struggling to link back to anyone in my family tree ( So many descendants ), a so-called 'Unlinked Family Cluster'. I have spent so, so many hours on trying to solve what I term my 'Mormon' puzzle and getting nowhere. I have identified many of these individuals as descendants of a Scottish couple living in Lanarkshire, Scotland, Elizabeth Russell and Thomas Archibald, who became Mormons.  After Thomas died, Elizabeth set out for America with her children, arriving in Utah in 1862. By the time of her death, Elizabeth had 118 grandchildren and 277 great grandchildren. It is no wonder that I have such a huge number of DNA matches whose paper trail lead back to her. Some of my groups from Ancestry. You can see how the huge Archibald group stands out. Identifying Elizabeth and her her husband as the common ancestral couple for a lot of these DNA matches was a step in the right direction, but only the firs...