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Members' Stories III: Skeleton in my Cupboard, and DNA Surprises
In the third of our occasional series of Members' Stories events, Maggie shared the history of "a skeleton in the cupboard", whilst Jane gave us helpful clarification of the value of DNA profiling, using her researches for members Sheila and Peter as an example. Thirty members and one visiting non-member were at the Fromus Centre, whilst around ten members attended over Zoom.
"A Skeleton in my Family Cupboard" by Maggie Strutt
Maggie started by warning that she was passing on facts that may upset some people, and making no moral judgment. She then recounted the history of her great-grandfather, Henry Thomas GRIFFITH, a Norfolk country parson. He was the only son, with eight sisters, of Thomas (also a cleric) and Charlotte, who were first cousins. Aged 23 in 1852, Henry was already Curate at St Stephens in Hull. Then in 1856, he and his wife Ann Elizabeth BRYAN — daughter of a mariner and (at least, in 1871) a charwoman — moved to Norfolk, where all their eight children were born. The eldest, Thomas Comber GRIFFITH was, according to family records, adopted. The youngest, another Charlotte, was to become Maggie's own grandmother.
Within a tiny area of the Norfolk Broads — Hanworth, Sustead, and North Walsham & Felmingham — Henry progressed over four decades from lowly curate to rector, for 16 years, of Smallburgh, where he died in 1897. He had turned blind for his last few years, the peculiar blindness which results from inbreeding — with three first-cousin marriages in his ancestry, including his own parents — so he learnt the Lessons by heart, week by week.
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image above by Steve S | ||
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Henry Thos GRIFFITH in old age | Thos Comber GRIFFITH (seated) and Arthur BELL (extreme R) | |
both images (and header) © Maggie Strutt |
In the early 1870s, son Thomas and his younger brother Wandy had gone out to Brazil, some years later joined by their sisters Emma and Charlotte, where the latter married Arthur BELL in Pernambuco (now called Recife) in 1899. So Maggie's father, his brothers and their cousins were all born in Brazil, which Maggie visited in 2008 for her family researches.
To return to Henry and Ann — family records suggest Maggie's great-grandparents married in 1855, but the marriage certificate is dated May 1856, with Henry aged 27 and Ann 16. However, her birth certificate shows her as a little over 15½ — quite legal, as it was only in 1929 that the minimum age of legal marriage in the UK was raised to 16, from 12 for girls and 14 for boys — but still much younger than Henry. Normally, couples marry in the bride's parish, and where Henry was also a curate, but they did so in Selby, 40 miles away — and then, only two months later, he resigned his curacy in Hull to move, without promotion, to Hanworth. Also, Maggie then discovered that Thomas, the so-believed "adopted" eldest son, was in fact born to Ann and Henry in September 1856, just 4½ months after their marriage, and on the day after Ann's 16th birthday.
Maggie ended by saying that it has been suggested that maybe Henry exploited or abused Ann, or that they were pressurised by family to get married to avoid scandal — all supposition, we’ll never know, but she’d like to think they did so for love, something that didn’t always happen in Victorian times. We cannot judge the past against the standards, conventions and laws of today. Also, maybe just one rash act should not mark a person for life, and Henry certainly "did the right thing" by Ann, when he could have hidden behind his higher 'rank' or assumed respectability. Also, they were together many years raising a large family, and respected enough for Henry to gain several promotions within his little corner of the Norfolk Broads.
"DNA Surprises" by Jane Evans
Without notes, but with some excellently clear and explanatory visual material, Jane gave a jargon-free exposé of DNA profiling applied to family history research. First of all, she outlined why the technique is used, and why people might want to take a DNA test.
Reasons why you might want to take a DNA test include —
you may have hit a brick wall in your family tree,
you may be trying to find an unknown ancestor,
you can use DNA evidence to back up your tree research,
ethnicity can provide insight into your ancestral origins,
you may be able to help others find their family.
Jane holds memberships with various DNA-test providers, such as Ancestry, and other subscribers (like Sheila and Peter) can then 'piggy-back' upon her account to benefit from her knowledge and experience. Each submits a bar-coded DNA test-pack which cannot, just as at the doctors', be shared, for obvious reasons. There are plenty of YouTube videoguides to explain the whole process of taking a test.
You can choose whether you allow your samples to participate in research, including the gathering of statistics, which subsequently help the service providers estimate how closely related potential relatives might be — such as second, third, fourth cousins, etc.
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As half of each of the father's and mother's DNA is passed to the child, the genes it receives are similar to cutting from a deck of cards (as illustrated above), though some DNA may not be passed down at all.
Images below: © AncestryDNA | ||||
Peter was expecting Essex and the South-West to feature in his ethnicity results, |
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"Your DNA looks most like DNA from ... England & NW Europe 48% [brown arrow: Devon/Cornwall, |
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"In 1891 there were 102 Trenerry families living in Cornwall, ... about 72% of all Trenerrys in the UK." |
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Image above by Maggie |
Sheila was expecting her ethnicity to be largely based in Essex, and so it proved, but the surprise to her was that there were also traces from "Germanic Europe" (shown in pale blue below).
Six per cent of the UK population carries Viking DNA, only a little less than the 10% in Sweden — a useful book on this subject is bioarchaeologist Cat Jarman's "The River Kings".
The databank of DNA results is ever-growing, and Peter already has over 23,000 DNA matches.
The Family History Federation have produced
a four-page guide, which you can download from here.
Thank you to both speakers for their most interesting and informative talks —
and for the Christmas fare that we enjoyed in the hall afterwards!
Steve Stocks
The images above were supplied by the respective speaker, unless indicated otherwise.