Digging up the past - an unusual hunt for DNA

My Scots ancestry has proved hard to pin down.  My grandfather shared a bedroom with his Grandpa Hunter in the 1930s – he neglected to steal any DNA, but instead garnered that the Hunters were from Scotland.  More reliable information from a line of females still in Cornwall, says that they were from Ireland.  Since the last male Hunter died in Bendigo, 1970, we’re not likely to know the answer any time soon.  As to the man who arrived in Cornwall about 1770, he might have been a Scotsman born in Ireland – that would make both stories correct.

The other relative I’d like to dig up lies in Mount Jerome, Dublin.  By comparing his DNA with my cousin in Mount Avenue, Ealing, we’d know for sure if the massive Urch and Harding families were related to us.  I believe the vicar of Baltonsborough was probably drunk on communion wine and that’s why my Sarah Lucas appears to have been baptised as Mary, Christmas Day 1804.  Though I admit that checking the microfiche at cousin Hala’s house in Walthamstow is probably easier than telephoning the Irish gardae for a reburial.

Ironically one of the Lucas family *was* actually dug up, by accident, in Adelaide a few years ago, see our earlier tale.