Paper trails and decades of research, what is the point?

[coombs]

I think genealogy perhaps is not for me in many ways if DNA testing is revealing family secrets long thought to have been buried forever, and no doubt if I did DNA, it would reveal some many not be my blood ancestors?

I know people will disagree strongly but I always feel if an ancestor is not a blood ancestor, then they are not a real ancestor, as they are not actually responsible for my existence, or anyone else thought to have descended from them.

Shall I just use tracing my ancestry as simply family history instead of hoping I blood descend from ancestors, some of whom I have become attached to for some odd reason. Uncertainty is something I seem hard to accept, even if it is quite small. Since my father died, it has worsened the possibility of my tree having NPE's.

For instance I have a male ancestor who wed a female ancestor when she was 7 months pregnant, and the baby was born 2 months after the wedding (and was christened in the same parish, as the daughter of the man her mother married and the mother herself), in a part of London that was still half rural at the time, and the man came from an area in the country I grew up in but not where my parents are from, so one of my parents has ancestors from the area she moved to, so finding this link made me feel at home, as my family. Going back to the "shotgun" wedding, the baby born during the parents marriage was my direct ancestor, and while it is highly likely the recorded father was the real father, there is always the 1% chance of doubt as with any paternity in a family tree. That 1% doubt is what can niggle away at times, even if the marriage took place over 200 years ago, so the ancestral link is several generations back, so quite a negligible amount of ancestry from the area I grew up in, as it was a 6xgreat grandfather.

[Mike in Cumbria]

You're right, there's no point to it.

It's an interesting hobby though.

[Erato]

"simply family history"

That's the fun part.  The bloodlines are just glorified animal husbandry.  I found a great newspaper article yesterday -  how William Stewart escaped from Savannah at the outset of the Civil War and made his way back to Maine while the Confederate Army was trying to apprehend him.  And he got his wife and young children out, too.  It was a great story even if he wasn't a blood relative but merely the husband of a first cousin three times removed.

[dobfarm]

Its a tale I read but fits this thread .

A local 'well to do' snobby woman on the village parish church flower arranging committee, she had been doing her paternal family ancestry that she bragged her father could trace his ancestors back to Kings & Queens of England and trying to prove her issue ! she did the ancestry DNA. To be brief: She got a result! a half brother taxi driver in New York who was of African /West Indian ancestry and in WW2 the USA sent troops over to the UK -one being the taxi drivers father billeted near this woman's village in the mid 1940's before D-Day and the woman's thought real father was fighting overseas.

The woman resigned from the flower arranging committee soon after without giving a reason.
                                                       




P.S Some mixed race babies are born with white skin - this lady must have been one.

[brigidmac]

I think the people who bring up a child have a big influence on their lives .

Family trees have room for legal parents and biological parents .

If DNA throws up a non parental event you can add the biological parents to the known tree as alternative.it does not alter years of research .

The trees of royals and peers are well researched but many contain biological impossibilities ( kings away at war when children conceived, etc) .
Many people who have eagerly traced their ancestors to royalty have not taken illegitimacy into account +...may not have the correct biological lineage..

[Ray T]

The trees of the royals may well be researched but I’m given to understand that extra-marital relationships in their lines make them not quite so thoroughbred as they might like us to believe!

[coombs]

I think the people who bring up a child have a big influence on their lives .

Family trees have room for legal parents and biological parents .

If DNA throws up a non parental event you can add the biological parents to the known tree as alternative.it does not alter years of research .

The trees of royals and peers are well researched but many contain biological impossibilities ( kings away at war when children conceived, etc) .
Many people who have eagerly traced their ancestors to royalty have not taken illegitimacy into account +...may not have the correct biological lineage..

If they shared the same surname as the assumed father, as they would usually do, then that is a great qualification to see the assumed father as family.

Bridal pregnancy in our ancestors days was very common. About a 3rd of all brides in the 1700s were pregnant, and the number increased in the 1800s a bit. I would say 97% of the time the man the women married was the father of the baby, but there will always be a few exceptions. In the case of the woman I mentioned in my first post, well the man she married while pregnant lived in the same neighbourhood, and he was a weaver, like her father was. They married by banns 7 months into her pregnancy, so they may not have been able to afford to marry sooner, or they wanted to get round to it before the baby came. Or they had the famous trial marriage and fertility guarantee. Baby was christened as the daughter of the man she married. 99% certainty. The 1% room for doubt (or 0.01%) is going to be there in any case of parentage, so there is no point worrying. Take it that he was the biological father as records say.

[Mike in Cumbria]

The 1% room for doubt (or 0.01%) is going to be there in any case of parentage, so there is no point worrying. Take it that he was the biological father as records say.

But you were the one doing the worrying!

[coombs]

The 1% room for doubt (or 0.01%) is going to be there in any case of parentage, so there is no point worrying. Take it that he was the biological father as records say.

But you were the one doing the worrying!

Yes but I can still decide to stop worrying.