Tag: Ireland

Great Britain Connections

In August and September I traveled throughout Great Britain. This was a heritage trip and not designed as a genealogy trip. What’s the difference? A heritage trip is a visit to an area in which your family once resided but while there you aren’t looking for the old homestead or farm. Rather, you are just getting a feel for what the area is like. A genealogy trip is when you are actively researching records for an ancestor.

To be honest, I couldn’t help but combine the two. I did stop at libraries and genealogical societies in a few places to see if I could find anything that wasn’t already online. No luck! I also just showed up at several locations where I knew that my husband or my ancestors had once lived to ask about various surnames.

The picture above is of Bains Sweet Shop in Edinburgh, Scotland. Our hotel happened to be next door. While exploring the city I was stunned to see the sign – yes, I have a sweet tooth but it was the owner’s name that struck me. I am a Bains/Baines/Baynes and my distant cousin Vickie had asked me before I left to see if I could get any information on that wonderful Quaker line.

The Bains are often in my thoughts as I put in a fireplace in my home two years ago. Unknowingly, I was drawn to a type of rock to use and when it arrived at my home to be installed, I was surprised to discover I had selected rock quarried from Bucks County, Pennsylvania. That’s where my 7th great grandmother, Elinor “Ellin” had emigrated to. Her parents, Mathew and Margaret Hatton Baines/Bean had died at sea. I’ve wondered if Ellin had a stone fireplace similar to mine.

I didn’t expect to actually meet a Bains on my travels but I did. Mr. Bain was not into genealogy and had no idea how we could be connected but he did know that his family had been in Scotland for hundreds of years. He jokingly told me to research his line and let him know if I find we are related. Kindly, he gave my husband and I free samples of his delicious candy that he makes himself.

My husband was also in for a surprise. We had decided to visit a site that was once a monastery in Ireland. The tour guide mentioned Brian Boru, of who I am descended. The guide gave some incorrect information about the University of Notre Dame so after the tour ended, I approached him to let him know privately that the school is not known as the Fighting Irish because they come from Irish fighters but because they had once taken on the Ku Klux Klan when that white supremacist organization tried to instill their racist views on South Bend, Indiana.

The tour guide said he did know the real reason but his story was much more entertaining (Sigh). He then mentioned he had noticed I was very interested in what he had to say about Brian Boru. I told him I was a descendant and he asked me if I was an O’Brien. I told him no, but that my husband’s third great grandmother was Mary “Molly” O’Brien from Limerick. In sharing our genealogies, turns out he was my husband’s third cousin. He also claimed to be a descendant of Brian Boru meaning, my husband is likely, also. This isn’t the first time that my husband and I have shared an ancestor but it was the strangest way I’ve ever gotten a hint that we might have. Definitely, more research is needed. What struck me as odd, though, was that in May I had sought out the location of Molly’s grave in Chicago and discovered there was no stone. Since then, I submitted an article for publication in an Irish American newsletter about Mary and her unusual agreement with her husband. Mary was Roman Catholic, her husband was Protestant. Back in the 1850s they agree to maintain both faiths in their household. I’ve blogged about their decision previously but thought it should be published somewhere for future generations. I had just emailed the article off the day before we left for the trip and wasn’t thinking much more about Molly until this strange connection occurred.

Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?!

Next week I’ll be heading off to the 36th International Congress of Genealogical and Heraldic Sciences in Boston so I won’t be blogging next weekend. See you the following week.

DNA Ethnicity Surprises

Ancestry.com has again updated their DNA Results Summary.  Sure, it’s only as accurate as the number of people who have tested.  What my latest results tell me is that Ancestry has had a whole lot more Swedish, German and Slavs testing and not many Balkans.

I know this because the updated results show I am 42% Eastern European and Russian and 41% Germanic Europe.  

In Ancestry’s last update, I was considered French; today I am of German ancestry. 

My paternal line would not have thought much of that finding; with a name like Leininger they would have accepted the Germanic Europe as fact.  The truth is more complex – the ancestors that were forgotten most likely would have been livid with the designation as they considered themselves French. My two times great grandmother was christened as Marie Marguerite not the Germanic Maria Margarette.  Her spouse was christened Jean Leininger and not Johan.  They resided in the Palatinate, the region that flipped several time between what is now Germany and France. They wisely spoke both French and German. Funny that the land has stopped switching but the ethnicity indicators haven’t.  Ancestry would be smart to have a Palatine region noted instead of moving ethnicity results every update.

Interestingly, the results do include 5% of an ethnicity estimate as French and the region is the Riviera, where my Lamphere’s (Landfairs) did reside in the 1600’s prior to fleeing France for London and then Ireland and then Virginia.  It appears they intermarried with relatives and others who fled with them and that is somewhat supported in that I now have no Irish identified.  Well, that’s not quite true, either…

My Irish is encompassed under my Scottish designation.  

I also find it interesting that I have Welsh separated from England (which encompasses Northwestern Europe now).  I am most definitely Welsh with my people moving to Cheshire for a time.  That is shown in the map, along with the northwest section of France.  That is also correct as I have some William the Conqueror folks originating in that French region.  

My maternal line, though, would have my grandmother in requesting her money back.

Family stories shared by my grandmother say her side moved to the what is now the outskirts of Zagreb, Croatia around the time of Christ because of overpopulation on the island to the south where they once resided.  That would most likely have been Kos Island, part of Greece today.  The now defunct National Geographic project did route my ancestry on that trail.  Grandma said my grandfather’s people had already been in the Zagreb region when her people arrived and they had been Gypsies. National Geographic’s results showed that, too.  Using records, I can show that my maternal line was in the Zagreb region as far back as the 1600’s.  Based on a title the family was awarded, I can show some were in the region as early as the 1100’s.  For 900 years, they resided in a small area in what is now known as Croatia.  According to Ancestry, I’m 3% Balkan.  

Explaining to my grandmother how Ancestry obtains their results would have been maddening.  I’m sure some of you are going to have to try with an older relative.  I send you good thoughts in doing that!

I am quite impressed, though, with Ancestry and their Swedish results.  Look above as I have shown how Southern Sweden is shown by region.  I have worked very hard to get most of my husband’s Swedish lines identified and they are from the area Ancestry identified.  I’m looking forward to someday seeing a trend like this for my other ethnicities.

Ancestry has also released a section called StoryScout.  It’s housed under DNA and includes information that you may have provided in a tree.  I didn’t spend much time on this but I did take a look and it reminded me of something that is important to do and I honestly fail at it.

The section is based on census and military records from the 20th century.  Sure, I’ve saved those records to my ancestors 20 plus years ago.  I know where they lived, who they lived with, blah blah blah.  What gave me pause, however, was that it correctly showed my maternal grandfather and noted that his income was nearly twice that of an average man at the time.  He made $1400.00 per year when the average was in the mid $700.00’s.  Wow.  This explained to me why my immigrant family could afford a car in the 1920’s, a phone in the 1930’s, travel to California in the 1940’s and to Europe in the ’60’s.  Now I understand why grandma, when babysitting me, would drag me to the nice stores and dress shops and had her hair done each week.  Duh!  They never flaunted their wealth and dutifully shipped supplies several times a year back to the old country.  Thanks, Ancestry, for taking one small data point in the census and giving me an insight I hadn’t he thought about.  Try it, it might work for you, too.

New Irish Records Finding Aid

Do you have Irish roots? If so, you need to know about a wonderful document that was released last month. The List of Church of Ireland Parish Register that was once an in-house document compiled by the Public Records Office of Ireland is now updated and available to the general public for free.

I especially love the “Comment” section, key and the color coding which makes finding what you need and where it’s located easier. This 96 page pdf may be just what you need to discover your Irish lines’ baptism, marriage and burial records. ádh mór!