The Demolished Brick Walls Thread

[4b2]

This is a thread to post details of the bricks walls you’ve broken through with the help of DNA.

- a paternal gg-grandmother disappeared after the 1881 census at the age of 20; I’d spent some time trying to find where she may have gone with no luck; I had one DNA match, who given the size and common ancestry I presumed was a half 2nd cousin via this gg-grandmother, but he had no tree and did not reply to a message; given it was quite an uncommon name with only four occurrences in the birth indexes, I decided to piece together their trees, starting with the one that had a Welsh mother’s maiden name, given the relevant ancestry is Welsh; within 5 minutes I pull up a 1901 census for the match’s grandfather the first thing I see is Churchstoke, Montgomeryshire and then Aberhafesp, Montgomeryshire in the place of birth column; the second being my gg-grandmother’s place of birth; I scroll right and see the name Annie Elizabeth – my gg-grandmother who’d eluded me for 13 years

- direct paternal g-grandfather's mother's mother (same as above) - I was able to piece together this line via word of mouth info correlating enough with the census, but wasn't 100% sure as my g-grandfather's birth was not recorded; have correlated four lines of ancestry in DNA matches to prove; what would have been a line only based on word of mouth is proved with some lines going back to 1500

- 4X g-grandmother Ann Evans born in 1802 in a large town; don't have the father's name, so wasn't sure if I had the right baptism; I had what looked like the probable marriage for the parents, but no idea of where the lines might go from there with common names, no ages or places of brth; when going through a 2nd cousin 1x removed’s matches I found matches for the maternal line of Ann Evans; what I had listed as a 1802 dead-end now has the maternal line extended back to c. 1600

- a 4X g-grandmother was listed as born c 1795 in a certain village, but there was no baptism to be found; I looked through the parish registers and found a family of that name with baptisms up to 1790; the wife was 35 at that time, so you'd likely expect two more children to be born; I presumed this was the line of ancestry; a child of this ancestor had the full name of the suspected father as a forename; DNA showed this was to be correct; what would have been a 1795 dead end now has lines back to the 1500s

- a 5X g-grandmother from Scotland was difficult to place with poor records; Mary Armour - just happened to be the name of one of the poet Robert Burns' aunts, living in the same area at the same time; and some people had put that connection in their tree despite inadequate proof and ignoring the fact that said aunt died without issue; DNA showed my Mary Armour was another Mary Armour for whom there was no baptism

- when my best friend's father took a DNA test it turned out we were related; his paternal grandfather was born out of wedlock, though they did have a surname for the alleged father; that surname turned out to be correct with multiple clusters of matches confirming his ancestry; however the big question was why he had so many shared matches for a line of my ancestry with no paper trial, with the closest match being 56cM (half 3rd cousin); after whittling it down I was able to determine a 4X g-grandfather fathered two children by infidelity in 1838 and 1840, before moving about 20 miles away; in this test I was able to find matches that confirmed the parentage of an ancestor born around 1700, which I'd suspected from documents, but there was no convincing proof

- my maternal g-grandmother was born in British India and I didn't know what her surname was or where she may have been born; a very long-term and brutal dead-end; via collecting 10 DNA tests I was able to get a firm handle on the parents, who crop up a couple of times in records and thus I have a good idea of where my g-grandmother's baptism may be; the DNA matches correlate multiple lines of ancestry; a 1900 dead-end now has some lines back to 1600

[4b2]

- among the ancestry of the same g-grandmother was an Ann Chisholm; there was no apparat baptism for such a woman in India, so that was pretty much a dead-end; several trees on Ancestry have managed to botch a line of ancestry for her to a notable Chisholm family; doing my usual picking with dead ends I decided to look for previous marriages of Anns before her marriage to my ancestor; this despite her age at burial gave her as 13 at that marriage; I found a marriage of an Ann Pamby to a Joseph Chesson, 18 months earlier; this Joseph Chesson was also listed as Joseph Chisson, and I found the three are found interchangeable; Joseph died 10 months before Ann's marriage to my ancestor; it seemed convincing, but I wasn't 100% sure if my ancestor was this Ann Pamby; to increase the uncertainty this Ann's father was a solider Robert Pamby, who was recorded in the military musters as consistently born c. 1778; the musters list the place of birth only as England in all except one when they were more specific in listing Cambridge; N.B. it's quite often the musters list a major city near where an ancestor was born; on mustering into the army Robert gave a separate age, giving him born c. 1775; while the only possible baptism I could find was in 1772 in Ely, 17 miles from Cambridge; I wasn't sure if I had the right man or if this really was the right line; to make it even more uncertain my baptism candidate Robert Pamby married in 1792 and that wife died in 1832; yet my Robert is having children in India from 1808; my aunt's DNA results yielded no link; but when I received the results for two relatives on my grandmother's generational level I found within around ten common descendants of Robert Pamby, baptised in 1772, via his only surviving child born in England; these DNA matches correlated with my matches who shared the line of ancestry; this went on to be one of my most interesting lines; I found that shortly after Robert married he moved to London, but could not find work and was in a bad way; rather than seeking relief he took it on himself to try and provide for his family himself when he was caught stealing 50 kilos of biscuits; for which he was locked up in Newgate Prison at a time when such a theft could have attracted the death penalty; he returned to Ely and had two more children; I noted that the baptisms for Robert end in 1798, despite his wife being 28; it seems their marriage must have been on the rocks, for in the Cambridgeshire Petty Sessions of 1802 his wife is found being brought before them for breaking a man’s noise with a wooden bottle and saying “If he is not dead I wouldn’t mind finishing him.” The next we hear from Robert he is boarding a ship to join the Madras army in 1805, but all does not go well; first the flotilla he is part of sails to Brazil to collect further supplies, but before it does the ship Robert is on crashes into the only atoll in the Atlantic and sinks; he is moved to a new boat and then travels to South Africa where the British overthrow the Dutch colony before arriving in Madras; Robert quickly remarried; while his wife remarried in 1819, as a widow

Unsolved lines:

- direct paternal line - have some definite ancestors from matches, but not the full line; there are three matches that are half 2nd cousins once removed via whoever my paternal gg-grandfather is, but it happens whoever that was had another child by infidelity

- unknown 3X paternal g-grandfather - NPE - have found lots of common ancestry in matches, but can't see how they fit together, presumed more NPEs; the biggest puzzle in this cluster are the four matches who are mostly closely related, two are descendants of one set of parents and two are descendants of another st of parents; yet only one with connects to further DNA matches, and her line having DNA matches proving back to the 1720s; so it looks like whoever my ancestor committed infidelity with a woman who gave birth to his son in marriage, as well as producing my gg-grandmother by illegitimacy in 1837

- paternal grandmother was born out of wedlock; no DNA matches on that line until ~4th cousin matches (from my aunt), have been able to determine one line back from a 1814 birth with a few different lines proved beyond that; have another cluster with not many matches on another line, with that line having matches proving back to an ancestor born in 1746; very difficult to find how they fit together; there is a Scandinavian line coming in somewhere from here for which I only have matches on MyHeirtage; I also have about a 2nd cousin match on MyHeritage who may link in somewhere here, but having completed much of her tree can't see any link, other than it being in the general area of my grandmother's unknown ancestry, where the known lines are in Wigan and Liverpool

Anything can be potentially solved back to the late 18th century and earlier.

[4b2]

- yesterday I began going through my mother's paternal line, which I hadn't looked at much, as the lines are solid with DNA matches; though there was a big question re. a 3X great-grandmother for which I had no matches on any line (with multiple tests) [see below *]; I had one line with an ancestor born c. 1761, Richard Lewis, living in a part of Wales where only Welsh was spoken; a big issue there is that patronymics were used variably by different people in different ways at different times; e.g. in this area I have an ancestor still using patronymics in 1808, while another family were not using them in the 1720s; this consists of records in parish registers where you will get something like Richard, son of Rees Edwards - whereby that child will become known as Richard Rees; and there is no indication of what naming system they are using (unless they use multi-generational patronymics, e.g. Peter, son of Richard Rees Edwards; add to that - first sons may had have kept their fathers surname, while younger sons did not; with the very limited pools of names and surnames used in Welsh-speaking Wales, this makes it very difficult to progress through the 1700s; I found a cluster of matches descended from a Thomas Lewis, b.c. 1763, some of which overlapped with less distant matches to the family of Richard Lewis, b.c. 1761; it turns out both Richard Lewis, 1761 and Thomas Lewis, 1763 were both sons of a Lewis Morris, who is found buried in 1811, at the same farm as Richard Lewis, 1761 lived at later

* Regarding the 3rd great-grandmother, I had long been aware that I had no DNA matches to prove her ancestry, and  have a few tests from descendants, and she came from a large family; if she had been born of an NPE it didn't make sense why her mother's line was not showing up; her name was Emma Thomas, and was baptised as such in April 1848; the early censuses list her as born 1847-48, but she is later reported to be a bit older; no birth certificate; I also noticed that there is a preceding baptism in the tiny new chapely she was baptised at, in Dec 1846 - Emma Thomas, illegitimate daughter of Elizabeth Davies, of a certain farm, servant; this was curious as my Emma Thomas' mother's maiden name was Elizabeth Davies and the first name is given as Emma Thomas; however it turns out that Elizabeth Davies was another Elizabeth, who married in 1850 and was then living at the same farm with her parents, but without this illegitimate child for who I can find no further record of; to add to the intrigue, if my Emma Thomas was born around her baptism in April 1848, her mother would have been three months pregnant when she married; and further in the 1851 census Emma Thomas is listed as a step-daughter to the head of the household, along with the other children of her mother's 1st marriage; so my suspicion is that my ancestor Emma is the same Emma that was baptised in 1846, and she was adopted

[fiddlerslass]

My great grandmother  was  born June 1868, christened as Polly Campbell, purportedly the daughter of William Campbell, but later called herself Mary Ann Young and on her marriage certificate her father is given as Robert Young. The Campbells lived in a smallish  village and I found a Robert Young who was likely to be her father, but couldn't be certain he was the father of Polly/Mary Ann without DNA confirmation.

This Robert Young married Dec quarter of 1868 and I have a 32 cM DNA match to a descendant of his marriage  giving a relationship of half third cousin.
Unfortunately this match has not responded to my message, as actually their father, who would be a great grandchild of Robert Young, was adopted by a brother -in- law and taken to America. On their family tree my match is following the wrong (adoptive) family back  !

[coombs]

Nice stories 4b2 and I can relate to some.

My 2xgreat gran was born 31 Dec 1863, illegitimate, her mother married in summer 1864 and the baby was baptised as the child of the new husband, a male servant. Turns out he was quite recently a widower and his wife died of a long battle with TB in November 1863. Food for thought. Always best to do a DNA route to confirm or deny things though.

[goldfinch99]

I'd always wondered where my dad's Middleton surname came from.  I got as far back as an ancestor who was born around 1820 in London but no idea where his dad was from.

Then one day I was looking through DNA matches and found some matches with a possible Middleton ancestor but they all had mixed up names.  So I made a guess as to what the correct name should have been and searched that in the family trees section of Ancestry.  That broke my brick wall. It was a tree that had Middleton ancestry going back to about 1700 in north Lincolnshire and around 1790 one family group moved to Canada and were the ancestors of those DNA matches, and they had a cousin called Robert born 1790 who fit as the father of my ancestor who was born in London.

So I now know my Middleton line was in Lincolnshire in the 1700s thanks to those very distant cousins (about 6th or so) in North America and the guy with the amazing tree that included Middletons in Crowle, Lincolnshire.

[Petros]

A nice story on how a brick wall was demolished.  I wish I could do the same for one of mine, the most recent male ancestor who is a brick wall. A sailor who appears in Cornwall when in marries in 1814, almost certainly in the Royal Navy, remains there until the late 1830s and then disappears! One spelling of his name suggests he came from Suffolk but DNA matches are elusive.

[hctwins]

A couple days ago with the help of DNA and others, I was able to figure out how I related to a match. 
Our trees didn’t converge, but one location did: Barnard Castle, Durham, England.  Theories went from an affair to adoption, but after digging through Durham Records Online, we figured out we were full 5th cousins!