DNA and ethnicity on BBC Radio 4

[hdw]

Back in the 1980s I wrote a book about my native village in Fife and the local families - it was a fishing village and nearly everybody was related to everyone else - and I managed to collect some old photos of my ancestors from people I had never spoken to in my life before, who just happened to have photos of some of my forebears in their family albums.

Two different people gave me photos of my dad's two grannies, formidable Victorian ladies. The funny thing was that one of them was smiling grimly, with pursed mouth, and she looked like my dad smiling grimly, and the other one seemed to be in mourning, and was looking solemn, and she looked just like my dad when he was looking solemn. Both of them looked like my dad in drag.

Harry

[hurworth]

One of my gtgt-grandmothers was a small 7 stone woman with black hair, but we know from her father's army record that he was tall and fair - almost 6ft.  But there's DNA matches with descendants of a few of her father's siblings. 

I saw her mother's medical records recently and she was described as tall, thin and weighing 6 stone, but no precise height was given.