52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Week 2 - Favourite Photo

(I think I'm going to be interpreting the week numbers loosely in this series!)

Week 2's prompt was "Favorite Photo." -  Tell the story of the people, place, and event in a favourite photo. Where did the photo come from? Who has the original now? How did you get a copy of it?

It's difficult to choose one favourite photograph, amongst all the thousands I have but, in keeping with my aim of working through my ancestors systematically this year, I've chosen this one:

These are my paternal grandparents, Donald PARRY and Elsie THOMAS.  The photograph was taken at a party to celebrate a special wedding anniversary.  It's the first in a series of photographs that gradually expand through the family, to include their children, children's spouses, grandchildren and then, finally, everyone who was at the party.  Including the piano player who, according to a story told to me years later, just happened to be someone in the pub at the time who was able to play the piano!

I don't think there is one 'original' print of the photograph - all of the main family members had copies.

In this post, I'm focusing on my grandfather, who was born on 3rd February 1904, in Mordiford, Herefordshire, the son of John PARRY and Rosina Louisa, formerly PREECE.  Donald was baptised on 17 April 1904 - I was rather surprised when I first found that baptism entry on the British Vital Records cds, as it was less than 100 years old at the time.  But thanks to that surprise, which led me to enthusiastically show the entry to my mother, and then randomly decide to search for one of her "brick wall" ancestors, we solved that brick wall of hers!  (I'll save the details of who that was, for when I tell that ancestor's story.)

Donald had one sister, Rosina Jane, who was born in Hereford on 5th April 1905.  Sadly, their mother, Rosina Louisa, passed away sixteen days after giving birth to her daughter.

One can only imagine what Donald's early life must have been like, having lost his mother so young.  Or how their father coped with the two infants, whilst also trying to earn a living.  I suspect other members of the family may have helped out, but actual evidence for what happened is in short supply.  Perhaps there were 'non-family' carers involved - there has to be some explanation for the anomalies I found in the local school records.  On the 3rd February 1908, Donald was admitted into All Saints Infants School but the school registers show his father's name as Donald Martin Parry, rather than as John, and Donald himself is recorded as Donald in one register and Albert Donald in another.

Although his sister was over a year younger than Donald, she is admitted to the infants school just three months after Donald, in May 1908.  Was this as a result of a difficult home situation?

There are errors in her school admission entry, as well, with the father's name recorded as Donald Martin again and her birth date entered as the 19th April, rather than the 5th.  She is also named Jane, rather than Rosina - but I do know she was called 'Joan' throughout her later life, so potentially this is not an error, but the name used for her from infancy.

One of my aims of following the 52ancestors series is to help me organise and record the information I currently have on my family.  But it also serves to indicate where more research is required. And clearly there is a need to investigate these errors in the school records further, if possible, so I have added an item to my Research Log, to look for any school log books which might reference the family and clarify the details on the admission registers.

I don't have any major concerns about the errors though, as the address for the entries, 104 Widemarsh Street, ties in with where Donald and 'Jane' appear in the 1911 census, with their names as per their birth certificates:

However, the 1911 census provided me with a mystery, which you might have noticed - where is their father, John PARRY?

He wasn't actually difficult to find.  What was more difficult was identifying why he was where he was - since he was in Hereford Gaol!

I'll save the full story (or as much as I currently know of it) for when I write about John.  But, just to avoid too much suspense, he was jailed on the 24 March 1911, by the Sheriff's Court, for 'Contempt of Court'.  And he wasn't released until the 9th December 1911.

Donald remained at the infants school until March 1912, when he transferred to the 'senior school'. Since he was only aged 8, I assume the 'senior school' was what we would now call a Junior School.  It was possibly "St Owens Council School" as, in 1914, Donald was awarded a prize from there, for regular attendance:

The book was Treasure Island and Kidnapped, by Robert Louis Stevenson (and purchased from C.E.Brunwell, Bookseller, Broad Street, Hereford, according to a little sticker in the back). I wonder if these tales of adventures inspired Donald, who later set off on travels of his own.

I currently don't have any further information about the family until 1918 - in November of that year, Donald and Rosina's father, John, passed away, aged 53.  It must have been a very difficult year for them, as their grandfather, Thomas PARRY, had also died in the February.  I don't know what level of contact Donald had, had with his grandfather, but it is possible that Thomas had been living with John and his family in the months prior to Thomas's death, although he actually died elsewhere. (This is based on the address given on Thomas's probate entry.)

What happened to Donald and Rosina after their father, John, died?

As far as I can gather, Rosina was looked after by an aunt and Donald was sent to stay with (and potentially work for) other relatives.  Almost five years later, in September 1923, Donald obtained the Grant of Administration for his father, whose effects were £30 14s 3d.  Then, in April 1924, he emigrated to Canada, in the company of a Rowland Thomas LEWIS.  We believe the two of them were on an agricultural scheme, but the arrangements are unclear - according to the Form 30a, Donald had paid his own fare across.

I haven't yet discovered when Donald returned to the UK, but he was here by February 1927, when he married Elsie May THOMAS.  Donald and Elsie lived for a while in Hanbury, Worcestershire, where they appear in the 1939 register. Later they moved to Herefordshire and then down to Cornwall, before eventually moving back to Herefordshire, and finally Worcestershire.

Donald and Elsie were able to come to my wedding.  We saw them in the months following that, when they chose some of the wedding photographs that they wished to have copies of. Sadly, Donald passed away before we had a chance to give them the copies.  I remember leaving the photographs with one of my aunts, after Donald's funeral, for her to give to Elsie at a more appropriate time.

It was one of their last 'days out' together.

Writing this has made me aware of how much information there is about my closest ancestors that still needs to be compiled properly - including any recollections of Donald and Elsie that those of us still alive might have.  The further back we go, the less detail we are likely to find out about our ancestors - so I think it's important that we record as much as we can about those we did know, and pass that information on to the generations to come.

Another potentially identified DNA connection

Isn't it nice when things just work out?

I haven't done much regarding DNA over the past month or so, due to other activities.  But I have tried to keep up with the "new" events, such as the MyHeritage changes.  I'll write more about my results at that site at another time - this post is about an Ancestry find.

Late last night, (probably too late, I should have been on my way to bed, but you know that thought, "I'll just check one more thing" 🙂) I decided to look at how many '4th cousin and closer' matches I have on Ancestry.  I thought it would probably be 81, which is what it went up to a week ago. But the numbers have been increasing more rapidly recently, with five new matches in that category since the beginning of the year, so I am ever hopeful of an increase.

The total was 82!

I quickly searched for the new match -  no tree and only a 'good' confidence level, with 22.7 centimorgans shared across 3 DNA segments.  That could mean three segments at about 7.5cM each, or it could be one longer segment and a couple of smaller ones.  I won't know unless they transfer their data to another site.  Still, it would be worth following up when I get time.

But then I looked for any shared matches.  Often there are none, as shared matches only show for matches in the "4th cousin and closer" category so, if this match also matches some of my more distant matches, the more distant ones won't show up on this person's profile.  But, this time, there was one shared match shown, predicted 'high confidence', with 38cM shared across 2 DNA segments.  And with a tree of eleven people.

I keep a running total of the numbers of matches I have, as well as noting the names of new matches and anything interesting about them (like whether they have a family tree, or a surname in common with me). So I could tell that the shared match had appeared on the 9th of January and, at that time, was not showing a family tree.  So I am fortunate in that it looks like they are interested in finding out more about their ancestry, as they have taken the trouble to add some family details.

There were two surnames in common with me, LEWIS in Wales and ALLEN in London.  The Welsh one was not in one of "my" counties, so I took a closer look at the ALLEN first.

There were no dates, just the location for the one female ALLEN's birth in London.  But her marriage was shown, so that gave me her husband's name.  Armed with that information, I was able to identify their marriage, in 1926, on Ancestry.  London records are well represented on the site so I didn't just find the civil registration index but also an image of the actual parish register.  That gave me the bride's father's details, Herbert Henry ALLEN, a poulterer.  As the bride's age was shown on the certificate, it didn't take long to find the family in the 1911 census, Herbert Henry (33), with wife, Ada (32), and children, Edward (12), Florence (11), Herbert Henry (10), Frederick (7), Joseph (6), Dorothy Violet (5), Cyril James (4), Bessie Maud (3) and Frank Reuben (1).  From there I checked the 1901 census, which showed Herbert and Ada, along with the two older children.  Herbert's birthplace was Lambeth in both censuses.  Ada's and the children's varied from Lambeth to Brixton and Stockwell, but these are fairly closely connected areas in south west London, and all familiar from my own family.

The next step was to identify the marriage of Herbert Henry ALLEN to Ada - I used FreeBMD for that and found that the most probable entry was in September 1898, in Camberwell.  Back to Ancestry to search for the church records.  Yes, again the entry was there - Herbert Henry ALLEN, aged 20, married Ada SPRINKS on September 12, 1898.  Herbert's father was a John ALLEN, Perambulator Maker.

Now that's exciting - because my John Prosser ALLEN, snr, was also a perambulator maker. And, on February 10th, 1878, my John, with his wife, Sarah, christened their son, Herbert Henry ALLEN!

Obviously, I need to continue to work through the details, and check for my John and Sarah in records such as the censuses, to make sure their Herbert is with them, or not, as appropriate, and that there's no evidence to suggest this isn't the right connection to my DNA match.  I also need to contact the shared match who appeared on my list yesterday, to confirm whether or not they connect to the same family line.  And, of course, it would be great if both matches transferred their raw data to one of the other DNA sites, so that we can check exactly where we match on the DNA.  That would also mean I could look for more evidence, for or against the connection, amongst my other DNA matches.

ALLEN is a fairly common surname, so I don't follow up general references to it on my DNA matches' surname lists - but, who knows, if these two matches do transfer their data, perhaps there'll be others matching over the same segments and with the same surname.  I'd certainly be following those up then!

Just going back to the quantity of DNA shared - 38cM is the average for 4th cousins (based on Blaine Bettinger's Shared cM Project*) whereas we actually appear to be 3rd cousins.  So the shared DNA is a bit on the low side, but well within the range.  The match with 22.7cM could be more distant, but I am hopeful that they will still be within the range of my genealogy!

(And I did eventually get to bed last night - although it was 'today' rather than yesterday!)


*
Blaine Bettinger's Shared cM Project - https://thegeneticgenealogist.com/
Interactive Tool by Jonny Perl - https://dnapainter.com/tools/sharedcm

52 ancestors in 52 weeks - Week 1 - Start

"Let's start at the very beginning..."

Perhaps I am being a little unimaginative, but I'm going to take several of Amy's suggested starting points and make my first "52 ancestors" post about myself.  After all, we're always advised to begin our family history with ourselves, and I am the "Home Person" on my Ancestry public tree.

But then again, I am not actually one of my own ancestors - so I'm also going to include my parents in this post.  Although they are both deceased, it still seems too close to publish much online about them, from a privacy point of view, so covering all three of us at once means I can then move on to the more distant ancestors, knowing I have at least mentioned us all in the series.

For those who don't know, the "52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks" is a series of weekly prompts, produced by Amy Johnson Crow, aimed at helping genealogists share their research about their ancestors.  I did consider taking part in the series some years ago, when I began the Genealogy Do-over. At the time, I'd recently acquired all of my parents' family history records and I was planning to work through them, starting with myself, in order to confirm, and add to, Mum and Dad's research.

Unfortunately, I got "bogged down" after about week 6 of the Do-over, and never started the actual "family history" tasks (although I learnt a lot about tools and techniques during those first few weeks, which definitely came in handy for some of the other activities I had going on then!)  You can find my 'Do-Over' posts earlier in this blog.  My more recent posts here (if you can call them "recent"!) have related to my DNA research.  Once again this is something that I find easy to get bogged down with, as DNA can rapidly become complicated, especially for those of us who are not particularly 'technologically minded' and who have to work hard at understanding what all the various tools can do. 

But one of the things I have learnt, in all the years since first taking a DNA test, is that family history is important!  DNA alone will not produce all the answers.  It needs to be combined with genealogy - so hopefully, this year will be the year when I really feel I demonstrate some proper "genetic genealogy"!

Anyway, back to my "start".

Obviously my parents were present - and they continued to be responsible for many of my "starts" in life. Particular memories for me include my first driving experiences - steering an old Bedford van, whilst sitting on Dad's lap (I couldn't reach the pedals!) and, as soon as I was legally old enough to drive, giving Mum a fright when I turned a corner rather abruptly, after she'd bravely allowed me to drive her car on a disused airfield.  Mum and Dad were both responsible for my enjoyment of gardening - I have many happy memories of visits to garden centres, and certain plants will forever be associated with particular experiences involving my parents.  They were also both responsible for my interest in photography, another of their joint hobbies.  A camera was passed down to me when I was merely six or seven and, again, specific memories are intrinsically linked with the two of them, such as photographing lightning in Singapore, and doing our own developing and printing at home.

Of course, the combination of these two hobbies does have its downside, as I now have thousands of photographs of flowers to deal with!

     

Mum was creative - I didn't inherit any of her musical skills but I like to think that some of her practical side has rubbed off on me, for general handicrafts and (potentially!) model making.  Dad was also practical but more studious. He was responsible for my interest in archaeology - I remember the two of us watching Mortimer Wheeler on television when I was a teenager.  Dad was also the one who began our family history research, back in the early 1980s. 

And he was the one who first mentioned DNA to me, around the year 2000, asking me if I knew anything about it. By then I had begun researching and was concentrating on our surname of Parry, since that was the one Dad had got stuck on and Mum and Dad were both working on all of the other branches.  One of my regrets is that my response was to say, no, I didn't know about DNA and didn't see how it could be used with a multiple origin surname like ours. 

If only I had asked what had he read and did he want to do it.......

Dad passed away within a year of that conversation.  Fortunately for me, seven years later, when I had finally learnt a bit about DNA, another male relative was willing to take a Y-DNA test.  But what a missed opportunity, to have been in there right in the early days of genetic genealogy.  Who knows what situation my DNA surname research would have been in now if I had acted differently?

But there's no point looking back at what might have been.  I'm what's known as a "RAF BRAT", so am fairly used to moving on without allowing regrets to build up.  And I am so grateful for the wealth of experiences my parents gave me, and for the treasures I still have to explore, within their research, as I begin this year's journey to increase my knowledge about all of my ancestors.

 
References
Amy Johnson Crow - https://www.amyjohnsoncrow.com/52-ancestors-in-52-weeks/