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.

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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.

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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.