I've spent the last few years trying to figure out who the heck my real ancestors on one of my parents' sides are. I'm stuck at my great-grandfather born c1850!
It's a twisty tale, since my great-grandfather used and passed on a fake name, for starters -- no one ever having had any clue about that until I worked it out after months of slogging around in databases on line.
His real surname was Hill. At least that was the surname his birth was registered, and he was baptised, under.
I've identified his named father (born c1820) and the father's father, but that's about as far as I can go. So the father's father was born somewhere in Devon or Cornwall, sometime around 1795 or earlier, and died before 1835. Good luck to me. And it may well be a totally false trail, in one of several possible ways now.
I bit the bullet last year and had the YDNA testing done.
With a name like Hill, and hundreds of Hills in the project at FTDNA, there would have to be a match! If he was a Hill. Most testees these days are in the US and are looking for their English roots -- the Cornish were the great emigrators, so looking outside England for a match made good sense. My gr-grfather's father had been involved in mining in the Linkinhorne area (as a share dealer and speculator mainly, from what I can tell), and we know that a mine is a hole anywhere in the world with a Cornishman at the bottom of it. And if there was no match with a Hill, well, maybe there was something to that the paternity tale ...! Problem is that the fake name is very rare, so not much chance of finding a match there. Best I could hope for was to rule Hill in or out.
My theory was right and my wish was granted. I got a strong YDNA37 match with someone whose ancestor, also involved in the copper mining industry in Cornwall, had emigrated to a copper mining area of the US in the 1840s. Excellent.
Except that his surname was not Hill. Or the fake one. It was Hoar.
As best I can tell, my gr-grfather's paternal grandmother was a Hoare.
This doesn't work: maternal ancestors' surnames don't count for male-line DNA matching.
But my gr-grfather's father was very attached to the name Hoare: he and his brother both had it as middle names on their baptisms (I had assumed because it was his mother's surname), and he used it in all records, all his life. His eldest son (my gr-grfather's brother) also used it as a third given name, and gave it to his son as a third given name, around 1880. (That child died in infancy and that was the end of that branch of the tree.) It very much has the look of a double-barreled surname: Hoare Hill. Perhaps the grandmother's surname was a coincidence, and it was the Hill grandfather whose unrecorded father was a Hoare.
Or perhaps my gr-grfather's mother -- his parents do not seem to have ever married, despite numerous births and random baptisms -- just named the 1820 Mr Hill as father of all her children and he wasn't. There are good reasons to think this too. The father could have been a Hoare.
Or the common ancestor was just before the era of surnames; my branch became Hill, the other became Hore/Hoar.
The match with the Hoar is very strong.
35 markers out of 37 -- one digit out, on each of two markers.
74% chance of a common ancestor at 12 generations, 99% at 24.
The other testee's paper trail goes back to a Hore in 1552. My Hill trail ends in 1820.
My 1820 birth is only 3 generations back from my testee -- my testee's great-grandfather.
The other testee's great-grandfather was born in 1788.
So 12 generations likely puts us before records. Even if I had any.
There are numerous on-line trees going back to the 1552 birth (and 2 generations farther back to a 1508 baptism which is probably about the 12th generation back). I can direct any interested Hore/Hoar/Hoares to those trees to see whether they connect up. And having now looked for them, I will approach those tree owners as well.
Oh -- not a single match for my testee in the Hill surname project. Or anywhere else.
I just want to know my ancestral surname! ... I whine. And then, of course, who my ancestors were ...
I also don't know whether Cornwall or Devon. My gr-grfather's supposed Hill grandfather resided in Devon at the time of his marriage in Cornwall, and after that marriage the family shifted back and forth across the Tamar at least once a decade. But the Hoar match is in St Austell back to the beginnings.
So:
Is anyone a Hore / Hoar / Hoare from Cornwall (or Devon) -- or does anyone know one -- who might like to collaborate on some YDNA testing?
