Background: I joined RootsChat in 2009; I have posted a number of topics regarding my Mumfords and have found out a lot about them. My ancestors lived in Hatfield Broad Oak, Essex, England (early 1800s) and before that in Great Dunmow, Essex (“starting” c1738). This topic was started only to question why my husband and mum and both sets of their parents have matches with Mumfords. I want to clarify this so no one duplicates any efforts.
Hi Ruskie. Thank you for your interest and great questions. I tend to be very chatty so I will try to be concise.
Unfortunately, I believe all of my mum’s and husband’s matches have very low cMs.
Looking at my husband’s matches, a good number of them have trees that go back to early English settlements in America (when and where their Mumford names are found).
The three of us have matches with people who have the following in their trees (if correct research has been done by others, of course):
Mumfords born late 1500s, Canfield Parva, Essex, England
Mumfords born early 1600s, Rhode Island, America
Mumfords born mid 1600s, Abingdon Parish, Washington County, Virginia, America
While looking for additional details to post, I found the following:
Husband has a match (through his mother’s side) with a direct descendant of my James’ grandfather. The match was through this person’s paternal (Mumford surname) branch until 1920. However, my husband only shares 15 cM, 1 segment. So if the tree is accurate, the match should be quite early, correct?
There are a lot of online trees for all of our matches. I believe I only contacted two people (who did not write back). I hesitated in writing to more as I couldn’t verify the accuracy in their trees so I started researching other branches.
There are at least a few trees that clearly show my Great Dunmow ancestors so I can tell how I am related to them. However, the problem is that I cannot determine how any of those trees could tie in with my mum’s ancestors. It is possible that there are links somewhere with my husband’s ancestors as I’ve not fully researched his branches.
I’ve rambled. My apologies. I do need to sit down and closely look at my mum’s matches. Perhaps I’ve missed something. I could be very wrong but I believe the link (especially with my husband) is somewhere in the 1700s or late 1600s, if that is possible since it was so long ago.
Thank you for your interest, Ruskie.