Roots, shoots and stories

Apart from four of my cousins who have kindly had their DNA tested for me, the closest matches I usually get popping up on the various testing sites are second cousins and their children. Imagine my surprise when a few months ago a closer match turned up - let's call him "Austin" (international man of mystery :)  ). Austin shared 264cM with me, approx. 4% of my DNA. Our common ancestor(s) aren't too far away! And given I am confident in my family tree, with confirmed DNA descendants much further out than our shared ancestors would be, I set about trying to find out who Austin was. I could see right away that Austin was related to me on my maternal side, as he shared DNA with the two maternal cousins of mine who have tested. To narrow the specific line I had to look and see what other matches we shared and it was obvious that Austin was descended from somebody on my maternal Anderson line. Austin had a family tree and luckily only one of his grandparents' lines wer...

So .... in the future one of your descendants wants to delve into their family history. Let's imagine they are really good at tracing records such as birth, marriage, deaths and censuses. They find you - but what do they really know about you, apart from those crucial dates, places and your job? (Of course, we don't know how far your imprint on today's social media will transfer through the generations, so they might very well find out what you had for lunch and where yesterday, but we don't know that for certain.) There may well be some older relative who remembers you and you may get lucky if they knew you well enough to tell them what kind of a person you were and some stories about you. But most people will likely remain unknown, existing as a name and relevant dates. That's quite sad really, as everyone has their story to tell. A story that I have been luckily enough to piece together, and, which I have written about before, is that of my 3 x great granduncle, ...

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 ...

 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,...