If anyone's been thinking of having their DNA done to further their family history....Ancestry are offering a deal for their DNA test for this weekend only. £49.00....plus £20 delivery and handling charge, normally it's £79 plus delivery charge.
Mine's certainly been an eye opener....overall in the 20th century the various strands of the family have behaved themselves but in the 19th we've criminals , prostitutes, brothel owners, Great Grandad on my Dad's side was a real waster, left his wife and kids three times before he went for good and ended up dying in Wakefield Workhouse.
If anyone is thinking about it, it gets better. I've just ordered a kit for my Mum....the delivery is a tenner, but there's also an option to buy a years subscription at half price £59.99.....new customers only though.
You should see what's in our tree. All sorts of dodgy characters in Barnsley. I was thinking about having it done as we have a dead end in Ireland and nobody knows where we came from. Does it connect you with other people who might help?
Yes, I've been doing mine for about 18 months, using Findmypast, Ancestry and a free app called Freebmd....no site has everything but Ancestry can be really useful in that you can see other people's trees who have your ancestors in...you can then contact them through the site, I've made some great contacts ...but some never reply. Don't take it for granted that their tree is definitely correct though, we all make mistakes, but sometimes they've got crucial info that you might not have found. As to the DNA, I found a 3rd Cousin, Cameron, in Australia through the Genealogy route, our Grandmothers were sisters and he'd got more photos of my family than I had....not only that photographs I never thought I'd find in my wildest dreams. Cameron had already had the test done, and the morning after my results came back I had a message in my inbox...welcome to the club Cuz...it had already flagged it up to him that we were Dna related, which at least proves the system works. Since then it's flagged up three more 3rd cousins who I'm in contact with, plus a few 4th cousins (sharing Great Great Grandparents)...all in all its found 214 cousins of different xG all over the world...and increasing as more people do the test. After 4th cousin though it can be really hard to identify the connection. This deal is a great starter ...although Findmypast has some real pluses including access to the old newspaper archive....which has been useful in finding my ancestors convictions!! If you want to know anything else feel free to get back to me.
On about the Irish side, we had the same on my Mum's side...we got back to 1800 and then a brick wall....the DNA gave me some clues to people in The US whose ancestors emigrated from Ireland just before the rest of the family came to England, they helped me take it back another 100 plus years.
Thanks. We've been doing our tree since 1983, I have no idea how my parents did so much without the internet. I've pretty much found all the census data that's available on ancestry and used Find my Past too. I pop into the library occasionally to search certain names if something interesting is coming up. Do you have to have Ancestry membership to get these contacts via dna? You've done well to get to 1800 in Ireland. My g grandad arrives in Leeds with his brother in about 1880 and that is that apart from vague notions of which area he was from. I bet you've not got an ancestor who was known for 'putting his children on the fire' in Barnsley. He also threatened to murder his son if he didn't steal some boots then ran away after the lad was caught.
Joking aside above I think I’m going to have a go at this, maybe not dna etc but start Witt the basics, could be quite interesting!
I certainly can't beat " putting his children on the fire"!! My favourites in mine are my,...Great Grandad....borrowed 5 shillings from his wife to go out for a drink and she didn't see him again for a year. Two GG Aunts were on the game in Batley...they robbed a farmer of £31 in their brothel...the farmer said they had dragged him into the house with a male accomplice and robbed him....another witness however said they had seen the farmer with one of the sisters " in a curious sexual position" A GG Uncle was one of five Irishmen who went into a boozer with weapons and beat a man senseless...the main culprit used a stick with large nails through it...GG Uncle seems almost Queensbury rules....he only used a metal candlestick to hit the poor sod with. If it's a while since you've been on it might be worth having another go...new info is going on line regularly and both sites are now using a "hints" system, you put your tree on and they come back with results that their algorithms think might fit the bill....a lot are unrelated but some have been gold dust, particularly links to other family trees. The best contacts for me came through using Findmypast's UK electoral roll, tracing ancestors down to living descendants on the roll and dropping them a line...sometimes the roll is quite old so you can't be sure they still live there....my trick has been to look at the address on Zoopla, the sales history of the property can give you a real clue as to whether they might be still there. I've probably written 20 or 30 letters...some have not replied, some have passed away but I've had a few priceless results. As to your Irish lot, if you haven't actually put the tree on Ancestry I would get it on, I've had a few people contact me when they've seen it and I've had enquiries from USA and New Zealand that have helped....a free resource that can be useful is Wikitree, you can put your Ancestry dna results into it and search for matches through it...it's enthusiast driven and the many times removed cousin in Australia that runs my Jewsbury side is amazingly helpful and knowledgeable.
It's fascinating because not only do you get to understand how you came to exist ( and dozens of reasons why you might not have been born ) but you get a real perspective on history that beats anything you were taught at school. Seeing how some of your ancestors move about the country and finally end up in Barnsley and why makes you more understanding of current migrations of people. Also the desperate poverty that existed where kids ended up dying in coal mines and your ancestor was the only one who survived from a family of 8. Barnsley archives are very helpful.
If you're thinking seriously about it, consider the deal...just for this weekend you can get the package for the DNA and a years subscription for around £115....outside of the deal the Dna will be about £90...ish and the years subscription over £100....Having said all that no one site has everything, what I did to begin with was paid a tenner for a month on Findmypast...and then had a month on Ancestry for £13.99...you can learn a lot in a short time that really sets you up. The reality is that you can't do Internet genealogy without paying, there is very little free stuff out there, although Freebmd and Wikitree can be handy.
Echo all that...when I got back to Victorian times it made me realise how tough the world must have been...we think the place is bad today but I'm finding that the scenes portrayed in ' Oliver' weren't exagerrated, that was real life...my GGG strain on my Dad's side were in Wolverhampton and in that area the old papers on Findmypast are full of murder, prostitution,drunkenness, robbery, assaults and all manner of tragedy. My Dad's maternal Grandfather seems to have done alright for himself...he was having studio portraits of the family done in the 1880's, but even then we have found about eight different occupations for him...more addresses than I can remember off hand...born in Birmingham...moved to West Brom....then to London, up to Stockton on Tees....several more addresses and jobs back in London...back to West Brom and finally dying in Bristol.
Ooo, I think I have 1200s in Devon thanks to some vicar bloke who looked into the Wreford family...they 'came out of Cornwall' round about then. Old newspapers are fascinating anyway to read but if it's your ancestors' shenanigans then they are even better. My Scargill ancestor got sent to Wakefeld house of correction for pinching a wheel. I always wondered what he nicked ONE wheel for but the newspaper later revealed it was part of a spinning wheel so he might actually have been trying to get on with some work. His dad was ( possibly ) the ultimate scab who caused a near riot by weavers on Market Hill because he went back to work when pay rates for linen had been cut causing a strike.
