2020 Week 7: 52 Ancestors - and their descendants. John PARRY & Rosina PREECE

One of the lessons I learnt quite quickly, when I began using DNA as a tool for researching my family history, was that I couldn't limit my research in the way that my parents had.

For my father, his goal was to trace the direct lines back. Yes, he would use information about any siblings if it helped him to identify the 'right' line, but those siblings were never a focus in his research.

My mother was more interested in family life.  How many siblings did her ancestor have? What was life like for the family growing up?  And how did that mother cope with ten children?  (Answer, as supplied by the aunt with ten children - "It's all right, after the first couple, the oldest bring up the rest" )

Now that I am making use of DNA results in the research process, I realised that the people who make up our DNA match lists (if genuine, genealogical matches, which they might not always be) have to be descendants of our ancestors, ie in order to trace our connection, it is not enough to just know who the siblings of our ancestors were, sometimes we might have to follow them down through several generations in order to arrive at our DNA matches.

Which is why, as well as posting about my direct ancestors in this series, after each couple, I will include a post about their other children and any generations beyond that, that I know about - subject to any privacy considerations regarding living people, of course.

For close generations, as in the case of my great grandparents, John PARRY & Rosina Louisa PREECE, we hit the privacy limit quite quickly.

John and Rosina had two children, my grandfather, Donald, and his sister, Rosina Jane, who was always known as "Aunty Joan" by my Dad's generation. Sadly, their mother Rosina Louisa died after giving birth to Rosina Joan and so it is unlikely I will ever find any records showing the whole family together.  John also died quite young so the children, aged 13 and 14, were sent to live with separate relatives.

But, despite such beginnings, the known descendants of John and Rosina have numbered over eighty five people, spread across four generations. They aren't all living any more but, even so, I think that's an impressive legacy, from such a short marriage.

A few of the descendants of John and Rosina have taken DNA tests and show up as matches to me at the levels which would be expected for such close relatives.  It is very useful having such relatives in the DNA databases, as they make it possible to narrow down which lines of my ancestry any shared matches are likely to connect to:

 

How DNA tested close relatives can help in identifying connections to shared DNA matches