Letting the youngest catch-up

While looking into distant auntie Betsy, I wondered about her brother Benjamin's family.

He and his wife had seven children, and the way things turned out has proved very fair in terms of marking each milestone.

Edwin (1839), Jane (1841), Joseph (1842), James (1844), Annie (1846), Sarah (1848) and William (1849). Several of them had the middle name of Haine whilst Jane had the middle name of Eliza. Joseph and Sarah had no middle names at all.

Eldest grandchild: this was from Edwin, child number 1.

Eldest great-grandchild: this was Ernest Court (1898), from James, child number 4.

Eldest great-great-grandchild: this was Kenneth Duffett (1932), from Annie, child number 5.

Eldest great-great-great-grandchild: this was Verna (1960), from William, child number 7.

Eldest great-great-great-great-grandchild: this was Anthony (1989), from Jane, child number 2.

Child number 3 was the first to be widowed (in 1870).

Child number 6 was the first to die (in 1870).

Incidentally child number 1's line became extinct in 2004 and child number 6's in 1954.

The time to next generation is 30 years each time, now bear in mind this is for the eldest. For example I belong to the same generation as Verna but am somewhat younger, so the average time-per-generation for me from Benjamin is 32 years.

We saw in an extreme case how Betsy's average time to next generation was 23 years when measuring the eldest. She was also 20 years his senior. Within a hundred years, Betsy was two generations ahead of Benjamin.

But mostly here I just wanted to remark on the unusual way the distribution of 'firsts' is shared among five of Benjamin's children.

Betsy's daughter v. the queen

We earlier looked at the mysterious case of why 'auntie Betsy' appears to have virtually no DNA matches to us, despite being not that distant a relative and also someone with hundreds of descendants.

The answer was that a typical DNA-tester in their mid-thirties would actually be a SIX-times-great-grandchild of Betsy, meaning they might possibly have none of her DNA whatsoever, and more likely that a half-fifth-cousin 3 times removed to myself is not very likely to match me. We are in effect at the limits quite suddenly of what autosomal DNA can do.

I am not sure I have any matches pertaining to a sibling or half-sibling of my 6xgreat-grandparents. So we close our Betsy-DNA files for now.

But all this attention on Betsy, some of the dates seemed quite familiar. Which got me thinking, how would Betsy's tribe fare in a face-off with the ruling royal family of Saxe-Cobourg-Gotha?

It's the gamekeeper's wife, Betsy's daughter Mary Blacker nee Padfield (born 1818) up against Albert of SCG's wife, queen Victoria (born 1819). I think this could be an easy victory for Mary, given what we found earlier.

Round 1, the children: Betsy's daughter scoops this one easy, first child 1837 vs. the queen 1839.

Round 2, the grandchildren: a bit close for comfort but still falling down to Betsy's daughter for the win: first grandchild, Henry Plumley (1857) vs. Kaiser Bill (1859). I think the royals are genuinely struggling at this point. In a surprise move, Betsy's folk have opted to leave Somerset for London.

Round 3, the great-grandchildren: out of nowhere the queen pulls ahead, Henry Stephen Plumley (1882) is no match for Feodora (1879). Betsy's line has to concede defeat in this round.

Round 4, the great-great-grandchildren: Betsy's daughter just regains the lost ground with Dorothy Blake (1904) up against an unexpected contender Margarita of Greece (1905). The queen has changed her strategy and has inexplicably switched to the family of her second daughter Princess Alice, in an attempt to seize control in this competition.

Round 5, the great-great-great-grandchildren: the queen has absolutely no chance here, the under-prepared royals have no suitable candidate, so Roy Miles (1927) is streets ahead of Margarita's nephew Ludwig (1931).

Round 6, the great-great-great-great-grandchildren: by now both teams are exhausted but Roy's son (1955) is still in the arrivals lounge some time before Maria Tatiana of Yugoslavia (1957).

Both teams have averaged 23 years per generation for a sustained period of 120 years. Well done to the bunch of Londoners for defeating the royals in 5 out of 6 rounds but this race through the generations is yet more evidence explaining why I'm unlikely to have DNA matches to Betsy's daughter, wife of the gamekeeper.

Incidentally, researching this, it seems that Queen Victoria is about to reach the milestone of 1000 living descendants some time around now. I have no easy way of knowing whether the gamekeeper's wife is heading that way herself. Perhaps she has already got there?

The Betsys Best Forgotten

So, Betsy has been driving me up the pole.

She first appeared on a tree drawn by my cousin Janet in 1993. I was very grateful for this tree. And when I went to the archives at Taunton I was able to see the evidence for myself. There she was listed in 1825 as "Betsy, daughter of [my wife] Mary Padfield, by a former husband".

Benjamin Padfield (1808-1891) was so straight-forward, a farmer and champion cheese maker, raised his family well and all learned music. As a boy he was ambitious to play the flute and viol - it's flute and violin but flute and viol sounds much more of its time. He gave apples to his grandchildren if they asked and ran the Sunday school in the village. He was second or third generation Methodist. I was given his photograph in a field exchange somewhere in the Somerset borders: a stout-hearted chap. Also - we have his Journal, his life story.

So for him to have a missing sister is distinctly out of character. His journal makes not a mention of "Betsy", who died when Benjamin was just 18.

Benjamin grew up to marry and have seven children and a rather staggering 50 grandchildren. Of these I counted just now and only a third have living family, quite a small fraction.

Since taking the AncestryDNA test six years ago I have been gifted with many findings, but one thorn in my side has been the absence of any descendants of Betsy showing up as DNA matches.

When we last left Betsy she was a small girl. She was baptised at Leigh-on-Mendip in 1789 and after marrying at 21, she had at least a five year rest before the children started arriving. She didn't have long as she must die at age 38. Quite probably the young couple were living with in-laws - Betsy's much younger half-brothers also endured such a period of 9 years and 3 years respectively.

Betsy had three children who lived to adulthood that we can trace: Mary (1818), Ann (1819) and Joseph (1827), with whom she died in childbirth. At this, the end of Betsy's life, Benjamin was just 18. Is Betsy best forgotten?

~~~~

I can see the thing to do would be to compare Betsy's family with Benjamin, and the best way of doing that is to look at the 1840s. In this epoch Benjamin raised his 7 children, and Betsy by this point had seven GRANDchildren.

Betsy is getting a generation ahead, already, and her family fills the 1850s with still more grandchildren.

Let's compare numbers.

Benjamin's children had their family in the years 1867-1898, producing the 50 youngsters (of whom 17 have surviving descendants).

Betsy's grandchildren had their family in the same period (starting ten years earlier, in 1857), producing 105 youngsters. So Betsy is not only a generation ahead, and doubling her numbers, but is also not thwarted by the low birth-rate of Benjamin's family as we turn the corner into the 1900s.

All of this suggests I should have plenty of DNA matches to choose from, even if the connection is a bit remote at half-fifth cousin.

But there's a problem. Betsy is steaming even further into the future. With Betsy, her eldest daughter Mary and eldest granddaughter Mary Jane all dying by 1890, the phrase 'accelerated lives' comes into my head. Benjamin's half-niece has become a great-grandmother and died, yet Benjamin is still alive.

Betsy's great-great-grandchildren are the same age as Benjamin's grandchildren; she has slipped two full generations ahead. My mother would be the same generation but born nearly 70 years later. And on they race. Benjamin's grandchildren continue steadily until 1901. Three years later and the line of his forgotten sister Betsy is 3 generations further along.

Consequently my own generation are not cycling around the countryside and researching on their laptop. They are dead: long dead! Dorothy Blake (1904-1981) is unlikely to be taking a DNA test. Chances are we are looking 3 generations down from me to Dorothy's great-grandson (born 1986). Such a person is separated from their ancestress Betsy by a whopping eight other people.

Benjamin's line meanwhile are content to dawdle, and to wait for the youngest to catch up. The eldest of my documented third cousins on this line Verna, born 1960 in Canada, belongs to seventh and youngest child William Haine Padfield. Betsy of course achieved this milestone back in 1904.

Not to confuse matters but Benjamin's brother Peter approximately midway between himself and Betsy is by 1960 a generation ahead of Benjamin. Peter also by about 1950 has begun to overtake Benjamin by sheer number of descendants despite having had only 5 grandchildren surviving versus Benjamin's 50. The "Peter" effect is partly attributable to very fertile moves overseas (Australia and Canada) as well perhaps as to some early deaths which meant they were less well provided for, and had to make their own way in the world.

The "Betsy" effect is counter-intuitive. I would have thought that sheer weight of descendants would mean we were overwhelmed with DNA matches. Not a single person from the huge Plumley tribe of Betsy's granddaughter Mary Jane (1837-1890) are showing up. Mind you these are Londoners, not based say in Utah, where numbers of those testing are far higher. I hadn't appreciated how much the 'fast-moving dying generations' were costing us.

Betsy was survived by her mother 13 years and we can read about her mother as this is recorded in Benjamin's Journal. There was an aunt who attained 80 and is living surrounded by grandchildren in the 1841 census. I can actually trace DNA matches more comfortably to the aunt than I can for Betsy.

Coming up to 200 years since she died, leaving no apparent trace in our family's written record, and with her DNA fast disappearing from her descendants as they gallop through their alloted generations.

Do we really think it's time to say that Betsy's Best Forgotten?

Ancestry ProTools

Not having ProTools has been an interesting mental challenge these last few years.

Now they're here, what mysteries have they resolved for me on my family tree?

The 101th person on my matchlist, Dorothy, 29cM had been bugging me. No tree, distinctive Scottish-sounding name. She was a 295cM match to Anne great-great-granddaughter of William Rodda (1799) whose family left Cornwall for Australia. Anne was just 16cM to me but ThruLines had cottoned on to the Rodda link. Actually it had linked the Roddas wrongly, but luckily for me I knew I descended from William Rodda's sister Mary (1808).

Teasing apart those Cornish Roddas hadn't proved easy, and like a hungry tiger I tend to bite off a leg of the tree at a time and then allow that to digest for a couple of years before resuming the meal.

So I am pretty sure that Dorothy is a descendant of William Rodda, and had maybe died this year in Australia, but more than that I'm not sure I could venture to suggest just yet.

~~

The Harrises of Montana were laughing at me. Several children of one 'James Harris' had married there around the turn of the century. I knew that they were from Cornwall and they were all DNA matches. Grandpa's grandma was born a Harris in Cornwall in 1837. This Janie Harris had married at Butte, Montana in 1896 to Mr Lawrence and their great-granddaughter 'Paula' was a high DNA match to us, but who was she?

Luckily ProTools came to the rescue. Paula was shown to be a whopping 95 centimorgans to Marlene over in Canada, and tip-toeing through the tree Marlene turns out to be great-granddaughter of Sarah Harris born 1853 in Camborne, Cornwall. More than likely 3rd cousin to Paula.

Now I'd probably have ignored Marlene but thanks to her evidence we've pretty much locked in James Harris as being born 1845 in Camborne, and several person-hours later, his family tree is super tight and tidy. I still have some questions, like why did his daughter Elizabeth stop being Bessie, and his daughter Beatrice become Bessie instead. And why was it necessary for Janie to be born Eliza Jane.

~~

ProTools has given me some helpful negative results too. After all these years, I really don't think many descendants of Henry Vyvyan Olver and his wife Mary Ann 'Mellieux' have bothered DNA testing. Any that have are not showing up with close matches across any of the kits the wider cousinhood manage.

~~

At 12 centimorgans, I bag my very own descendant of Mary Lane as a personal match to me. This is a big deal as she was born out of wedlock in 1808 in Somerset, and the Bastardy Bond (official document) had named my ancestor Thomas Creed as her father. I believe this to be true. Mary's family took a very different track from the rest and this is a nice personal touch for my tree. Incidentally she marries as 'Ann'! The match has not got much of a bio but I could lock him down as a relly thanks to him sharing 184 centimorgans with a known someone (on another matchlist) - revealed by ProTools. Trying not to use the word 'match' 400 times in one sentence. We need a thesaurus!

~~

Also harking back to the time of Trafalgar, the baptism of Mary Lucas (1804) at Baltonsborough had caused me consternation for years. I had accepted a while back that she was always thereafter known as 'Sarah', though whether this was a clerical error (see previous paragraph) or a volte-face by her parents I do not know. She dies before the 1851 census but one of her children is living with her widowed father in 1841, so I had long suspected. And her son Lucas was baptised as of Westholme, Pilton, same as a likely aunt. The Lucases were related to the Austins who brought rabbits to Australia accidentally-on-purpose.

For years we've had a match named Maria who descends from the Mary/Sarah Lucas person. I've always thought 'how lovely' but had pencilled it away with 'needs more proof'. Well Maria's match B____ is herself a reasonably close match (thanks ProTools) to a chap called Ivor. Ivor has no tree whatseover and is just 10 centimorgans to us but I recognised him straight away as being a descendant of Mary/Sarah's youngest sister born 1819 - who we happen to know was victim of a most unpleasant husband thanks to a granddaughter's memoir which bravely records the domestic violence she endured.

In an ideal world I'd like to demonstrate the descent of B____ from this family group, but that's not on the cards for any time soon.

~~

ProTools still won't show me zero centimorgan matches who form part of the cluster - great pity as this would prevent foolish errors in barking down the wrong family line when working with unknown parentage (one still has to get screenshots from helpful cousins). This was formerly available some years ago in USA as DNA Circles.

ProTools still won't show me 'other side of the moon'/360 degree visibility, i.e. those who are related to a person on AncestryDNA via one of their other family groups. But I wouldn't expect it to, really.

~~

Mustn't forget the Earl of Stamford! My dear 7th cousin kindly let me take a peek at their matchlist: our ancestors being nail-makers and rabbit farmers from in and around Kinver in Staffordshire. They have a 71cM match MrK (downweighted from 89cM) who along with his cousin I really could not 'place' in the family tree. I wondered if there had been a 'misattributed paternity' event somewhere down the line in Birmingham. ProTools pushed that theory into the hedge.

It found a quiet but helpful match named Lily, who at 17cM was rather low down the list. Yet she was 114cM to MrK. I could now see that their common ancestor was ostensibly the child of John Davenport (1801-45) and his extremely posh-sounding wife (born in fancy London she even had a middle name). John had a fascinating life as Steward to the Grey family of Enville Hall, the earl being grandson of a duke. Davenport's will is witnessed by the under butler. It was a Saturday so he can't have been very well. Ah the newspapers say it was suicide, with a musket, 'despite owning considerably property' in his own right.

Some more digging and actually the match Lily is a direct descendant of the gamekeeper by his wife (situation muddied as the Davies family really really hated getting married), so we don't have complex rivalry from 1837 to try to process. One of the other Davies kids would grow up to be footman at Stourton Castle before nearly marrying my relative and disappearing into thin air.

The gamekeeper was not only a pall-bearer to the steward, but also gave evidence at the inquest per Worcester Herald 1 March 1845.

None of these people would be of interest to me at all, had Sarah Brasier age about 8 not travelled on foot or in a cart six miles north of Kinver to her new home near, possibly in, the Green Man, Swindon. She later met a man working on the canal, which you could hardly miss as fewer than 100 yards from the pub, and age 16 married him at Dudley Top Church on Christmas Day 1767. Ultimately she left the county entirely and died we know not where, but she did bequeath us some of her Staffordshire genes.

We hope to find the answers to more nineteenth century puzzles lying hid in the DNA.

If there's any postscripts, I'll place them here.