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General => The Common Room => Topic started by: louisem on Wednesday 25 August 21 21:43 BST (UK)

Title: Can you help me with a DNA mystery?
Post by: louisem on Wednesday 25 August 21 21:43 BST (UK)
I believe My GG grandfather was William Henry Budge born sometime between 1852-54 in St Stephens/Launceston Cornwall. I have several DNA matches also linked to this ancestor so it seems likely this is correct.
He lived in Stoke Dameral and was the father of my G Grandfather Edgar Gordon Budge (born 1892)

I have believed from census info and a baptism record on Family Search that William’s parents were William Henry Betenson Budge and Eliza Crowley. They certainly are recorded as having a son William Henry who is the right age and birthplace. However I cannot find a single DNA link to this couple and I have also met online several descendants of William and Eliza who have done a DNA test and we are not connected.
I am concluding from this that my William Henry was either a) living with people who weren’t his birth parents or b) was a different William Henry Budge but there are so many similarities I have got them mixed up somehow.

I hope this isn’t too confusing and wondered if anyone had any ideas?

Thanks very much
Title: Re: Can you help me with a DNA mystery?
Post by: Mabel Bagshawe on Wednesday 25 August 21 22:35 BST (UK)
His navy records give his dob

William Henry Budge
Birth    13 Jul 1852     Launceston,
First Service Date:    1 Jan 1873
First Ship Served On:    Agincourt
Last Service Date:    5 Dec 1879
Last Ship Served On:    Northumberland

That would fit with this birth

BUDGE, WILLIAM  HENRY      
mmn CROWLEY     
Q3 1853   LAUNCESTON  Volume 05C  Page 25

Doesn;t help with the DNA!
Title: Re: Can you help me with a DNA mystery?
Post by: CaroleW on Wednesday 25 August 21 23:00 BST (UK)
Edgar's birth reg shows mmn as Turner

Marriages June qtr 1875   
William Henry Budge     Plymouth    5b   473      
Margery Turner       Plymouth    5b   473

What is his fathers name & occupation on his 1875 marriage cert
Title: Re: Can you help me with a DNA mystery?
Post by: avm228 on Wednesday 25 August 21 23:05 BST (UK)
William and Eliza’s family is interesting - they had William H shortly after their Jun qtr 1852 marriage (perhaps the pregnancy was the reason for the marriage), followed by no further children for many years, then an apparent burst of fertility in the 1860s:

1865 Jun qtr: Clara Ann Budge mmn Crowley (died aged 3)
1868 Jun qtr: Florence Emma Budge mmn Crowley
1869 Dec qtr: Arthur Edwin Budge mmn Crowley

Not sure where this gets you with the DNA, however!

Which child(ren) are the known descendants from?
Title: Re: Can you help me with a DNA mystery?
Post by: louisem on Wednesday 25 August 21 23:13 BST (UK)
Thank you all for digging. I also find the gap in the children curious and adds to my thinking that William may somehow have come from elsewhere!
I will check who the people I know of are descended from. I know they are all linked by DNA to each other but none to me.
Title: Re: Can you help me with a DNA mystery?
Post by: louisem on Wednesday 25 August 21 23:24 BST (UK)
Carole that is a very good question and I’m not sure that I have the wedding certificate. I will check my folders and if I don’t that my obvious next thing to do. Well I say obvious, it was obvious to you but not me so thank you very much for pointing me in that direction, sometimes I can’t see the wood for the trees and it’s so helpful for someone else to have a look/think.
Title: Re: Can you help me with a DNA mystery?
Post by: louisem on Thursday 26 August 21 00:01 BST (UK)
Another frustration is that when I try to see if there are other William H Budge born in Launceston in the same period Family Search is showing one in the 1871 census. I don’t have access to Find My Past so I can’t check this person but can find no sign of him on Ancestry or My Heritage in the 1871.
He is listed on Family Search as born Launceston 1852 and living in Devon 1871 as a warrant officers servant.
Title: Re: Can you help me with a DNA mystery?
Post by: Bee on Thursday 26 August 21 00:25 BST (UK)
Can't see him on Findmypast  :(
Title: Re: Can you help me with a DNA mystery?
Post by: louisem on Thursday 26 August 21 00:33 BST (UK)
Thank you for looking. I’m baffled by the entry on Family Search for 1871 which doesn’t seem to exist anywhere else.

I’ve ordered his marriage certificate to Margery Turner. Fingers crossed for something fascinating.
Title: Re: Can you help me with a DNA mystery?
Post by: CaroleW on Thursday 26 August 21 00:44 BST (UK)
FreeReg has a baptism in Lezant 1830 for William Henry Budge - parents William & Henry. 

1861 for William Henry Budge aged 7 b St Stephens Cornwall shows father William b Torpoint & mother Eliza b Devon.  Links to 1851 marriage between William Henry Budge & Eliza Butcher

You need the marriage cert
Title: Re: Can you help me with a DNA mystery?
Post by: louisem on Thursday 26 August 21 00:58 BST (UK)
Hopefully the certificate won’t take too long to arrive.

One reason I am so sure I should have DNA matches to this family if they are really ‘mine’ is that one of the ancestors, a man called Joseph Betenson, became a Mormon, emigrated to Utah and had a huge family. Knowing how keen the LDS church is on genealogy I just can’t believe I wouldn’t have any DNA matches fo this Budge/Betenson family if we were really related, but I have none.
Title: Re: Can you help me with a DNA mystery?
Post by: Galium on Thursday 26 August 21 09:00 BST (UK)
William Henry s/o William Henry Bettenson and Eliza Budge was baptised at Torpoint, Cornwall (just across the Tamar from Plymouth) on 8 January 1854.  Address is Torpoint.  Father is a cordwainer.
(on familysearch)
 The birth register shows William Henry Budge born September Q 1853, Launceston district Mmn Crowley.

William senior married Eliza Crowley as plain William Budge (a cordwainer) on 3 May 1852 at East Stonehouse. His father is Henry Budge, mariner. (on familysearch)

So I think they had been married at least 12 months before William Henry was born.

The William Henry Budge aged 19, born in Launceston that familysearch finds in 1871 was recorded with the crew aboard HMS Impregnable on 2 April.  However these pages have been firmly crossed out, with 'not on board' 'none of this book to be abstracted' written on the first one.
The name 'Budge' - if it actually is that, it is hard to tell - is under the downstroke of one of the crossings. 

I don't think he can be the same person as the one whose record Mabel Bagshaw found, since that one did not begin his naval service until 1873.
Title: Re: Can you help me with a DNA mystery?
Post by: CaroleW on Thursday 26 August 21 09:51 BST (UK)
The 1861 entry referred to in my earlier reply cannot be correct - father William is a seaman
Title: Re: Can you help me with a DNA mystery?
Post by: louisem on Thursday 26 August 21 11:04 BST (UK)
Thank you all very much, you’re all better at this than me.
The people I have met doing my research are all descended from siblings of the father William Henry Betenson Budge. I am aware of three descendants on this line and I don’t have a DNA match to any of them but they all match each other.
I am hoping the wedding certificate I have now ordered will throw some light on this.
I guess over the years there are so many discrepancies in parentage, people who looked after other people’s children, all sorts of complex family arrangements and such things were never spoken of. Not that this was necessarily the case here but there is something that just doesn’t seem quite right.
Strangely enough an older family member did a family tree pre DNA, pre computers. He travelled and looked at parish records. On his tree he had recorded that William Henry Budge’s parents were William Budge and Catherine Penney. We just all thought he was wrong as he didn’t have access to the info we now have. I now even wonder if he was aware of something via oral history that we don’t know?
Title: Re: Can you help me with a DNA mystery?
Post by: Galium on Thursday 26 August 21 12:31 BST (UK)
There is a marriage of a William Budge and Catherine Penney, which took place 27 March 1838 at North Hill, Cornwall.  I can't see this couple anywhere else.

The first Budge birth registered with mother's maiden name Penney seems to be a William Henry Budge born in Plymouth December Q 1852.  I think this William Henry Budge is pehaps the one age 3 months buried at Ford Park Cemetery on 25 March 1853.

I wonder whether the gap in births of children to William H B Budge and Eliza represents time that William spent in the navy?  He's a cordwainer when he marries and when son William is baptised, but on the baptism records of Frederick Arthur (1863), and Clara Ann (1866) he is a 'pensioner RN'.
(He is William Henry Budge, and William Henry Betenson Budge respectively for those baptisms)