Finding my past

My English ancestry is all over the place, Lancashire, Cheshire, West Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, the Black Country the Forest of Dean and the East End of London. I have a dodgy pedigree, that I have an electronic image of. It is a version printed in 1933. It is based on one compiled by Charles Bernau, a founder of the Society of Genealogists, London, in 1913, itself based on one used in a chancery court case in 1900. I have no way of verifying the original documents it was based on, so have no idea of its veracity. I definitely slot into it, via known ancestors. If it is true, I can trace a line of descent from Owain Glyndwr, through his daughter Alys, who married Sir John Scudamore. 

I've no Irish or Scandinavian DNA, it's the 7% Iberian that fascinates me, other than that I'm almost pure Southern English with a few continental aditions, France and Belgium sort of areas

I was illegitimate and adopted. Out of loyalty to my adopted mother I didn't search for my birth mother until I was 51 in 1999. You have to be vetted first and don't simply get told who your birth mother is-  all you get is your original birth certificate and any papers re your adoption. So all I knew was where my mother lived in 1948, no father named. It was all detective work thereafter. I discovered she'd died in 1990 so regret now not looking for her earlier, it's a big hole in my psyche. I discovered I had a half sister and 2 living aunts but they wanted nothing to do with me. So my mother took my father's ID to her grave. When DNA tests started becoming popular about 10 years ago i thought this might be they way to discover him through DNA relatives. I had no close paternal DNA relatives but the big surprise was the ones I did have were Polish and German. I have discovered one set of Polish great great paternal grandparents because so many of my DNA matches led to them but I need to find others and hopefully work forward in time (unlike most people who are searching further back in time) and find great grandparents and grandparents and eventually I might find some Pole or German who was in the right place and time to have been my father. Unless more Poles and Germans take DNA tests it seems very unlikely I'll ever find out who my father was. 

I have reliably traced one branch of my ancestors to 1578 and unreliably to the 1400s and earlier. I did an ancestry DNA test, that has given me some surprising results. I have a substantial amount of Irish ancestry and always thought that my English ancestry would be mostly ultimately Celtic also. This was supported by two ancient remains that I share a stretch of DNA with, a Neolithic man buried under the Poulnabrone dolmen in Co. Clare over 5,500 years ago and an Iron Age Briton buried in Dorset around the time of the Roman invasion. However, my Y chromosome haplogroup originated in the Bronze Age in Southern Scandinavia and I have a majority of ancient DNA matches to Viking Age or earlier Scandinavians, mostly, rather surprisingly, Swedes (Central Sweden and Gotland) - two of whom were buried in longships with weapons (alongside around 40 other men of fighting age - the Salme I and II ships).

Thats very interesting CW. Im adopted, my adoptive family have local midlands names, none especially uncommon. I knew they were mostly local artisans (if thats the right word), bakers, butchers, work with horses (farriers?), it hasn’t interested me enough to chase it backwards, especially with the family names being found additionally in two other areas of England and me living a long way away now  

I always knew I was adopted and what my original family name which was unusual. I managed to trace my birth mother and she introduced me to her brother who as keen as you on geaalogy. Their family names being on the male line indeed an aristocratic one and he got as far back as Henry VIIIs time. Their family had a hall in Surrey (its National Trust now), a lot of land, and relatively high military and administrative roles, one was one of the Lord Wardens of the Cinque Ports. However the line died out twice but sprang again from a more distant root on the first again, but the blood line was completely lost the second time, after which the then king gave the family titles to another completely unrelated man. 

It didn’t make me feel special having this connection and I rarely speak of it especially as my adoptive family were the ones who truly loved and cared for me. It always felt better that they had trades which fed their local community rather than working for corrupt royals (how nothing changes!).

As a post script about adoption linked to family research - high profile tv shows and books have pushed in both interests the myth that you are a. related to someone interesting/famous/royal, and that in most family reunions it is mostly all positive emotional happy hugging which builds lasting connection. As you observed re family tracing re the rarity of royal connection most birth parent tracings end either with no meaningful connection such that it dwindles away, or in actual psychological harm as in my case. 

Thanks for this interesting thread

Alice

You should be able to trace your family name as it's unusual. If it's based on a location, you can find that area, find who owned the land, was it in the doomsday book and take it back like that. It depends on what aspects of geneology you're interested in, finding long lost cousins etc, to tracing back a few generations, or like me, finding out the deeper ancestral roots. AI can find in momments what would take me hours, days and weeks to find and give me a headache trying to read badly scanned copies of already faint documents with difficult handwriting.

You've done a very good job finding your past.

That is interesting regarding the agricultural link. My parents looked up some county records. I live too far now. My Mum was able to go a fair way back as the name was unusual.

I've not got names of the people that far back, but as far back as I can go they were all agricultural workers who probably never went further than a few miles away from thier home village. But asking questions, around the question, like who held the land has enabled me to go that far back. Of course I can't be absolutely sure that we do go that far back, it is quite likely, for many people of the agricultural classes barely noticed the changes at the top of society, they just had different landlords and maybe a slightly different system of paying taxes and working the land.

You can look up census records free and many others, some parish records too if they've been digitised, but the further back you go the more likely they won't have been digitised and maybe held in county archives, which you should be able to access if you visit the record office, or they're in private collections who will charge a fee.

Many people couldn't read or write very well and surname spellings do change, often due to regional dialects being misunderstood, or because spelling wasn't standardised when the records were made. AI has been able to tell me what are the common misspellings of some names.

The idea of being related to royalty is a bit romantic, the further back you go the more likely you are to have some royalty in your family, but most of us wouldn't know because many would have been illegitimate, may not have ever been acknowleged by thier royal parent, if they even knew they existed. Which if there were any royalty in my famiy would probably be the case being basically peasants in a feudal society, you weren't always "free". There were many levels of people, from slaves to near slaves and on up to royalty

That is a long way back. I have some information my Mum researched before the internet including parish records, but not that far. She found quite a few similar names that it was believed were the same, but slightly differing spellings. Her grandfather had signed his name in the family Bible with an altered spelling, so suggested others could have done the same.

That is interesting regarding the records, as I believe those from census were free when you could go into the record office and look it up, but now they are on websites where you have to pay. You used to only pay for things like birth certificate copies. When I first had the internet I was able to look up details from the census regarding my family, but now you have to pay. 

That's amazing - good work! 

You never know you might have royalty! 

You've done better than most. That is a long way to go back.