Soap Box Rant with a Twist of Egg in my Face

I could not begin to tell you how many times in the past I would write to people online to advise them that they had some wrong information in their family tree.  Did I ever hear back from them - no.  Did they change their tree - no.  Did I give up trying - yes.  I hate to admit it, but yes I finally gave up.  I thought the most I could do was to make my tree open to the public and site sources and then any researcher doing their due diligence would find the tree and the sources.

So many times I have found the infamous "Portrait Palins" being the parents of people born in Staffordshire, and Shropshire and we all know that the children were born in Cheshire and baptised in Aldford.  Was it because of the "portraits" that people wanted to claim them as their own?

Never in my wildest imagination would a DNA test pick up a match with an incorrect tree!  This is what I got this week.

DNA Match Puzzler

In the previous blog I shared my DNA results and lack of  confirmed matches.  On Monday there were 67 4th cousins and now three days later there are 69.  As more and more people have the test done, these numbers have the potential to grow.

I am not willing to wait for anything to fall in my lap and decided to start to analyze those matches that are deemed as "Possible range: 4th - 6th cousins".

DNA Results

So after a bit of time the long awaited results are finally in.  I can say that there were no great surprises or shocks.  There is a wee bit of disappointment, but I will get into that later.

 

I have been researching my family lines for over 20 years and was pretty confident that I was a UK kid, just like my Nana told me.  Realizing that the UK history shows that the Romans were there pre 400 ad and then the Germanic tribes started to infiltrate and the vikings, I was expecting some European DNA - but from where was the question.

Protestation Returns of 1641–1642

I have just learned about a potential new database that may become available in the future - the Protestation Returns of 1641–1642.