Last night I got an email from cousin Debra in America. We’ve pooled our family history research for years, and share the same 2x gt grandfather. Now the identity of his father Edward Owens of Abbeycwmhir in Wales, is in question; someone on a genealogical forum has cast doubt our right to claim him. It could be very hard to unseat an ancestor I’ve invested time and care in revealing: dear Edward who, as a young married man, threw up his life as a shoemaker in the Welsh Borders to join Wellington’s army and travel to Ireland, Portugal and Sicily. He fought in the battle of Corunna, was awarded a medal, and was finally made a Chelsea Pensioner. And this also – if true – would undermine my delicious 3x gt grandmamma, born Maria Kinsey, who didn’t sit around waiting for her soldier husband to come home, but joined him for part of the time at least, giving birth to a daughter when they were stationed in Sicily. I view Edward and Maria as the restless, travelling ones who started a whole chain of further restless travellers in our family; some emigrated, and my direct line consists of 3 subsequent Baptist Minister grandfathers who moved out of Wales, into England and America. I like to think that my love of new horizons, along with a thirst for new ideas, comes from them.
So what’s to be done, if Edward isn’t my kin after all? It’s true that we don’t have unquestionable proof. But, on balance, I do think we have ‘reasonable evidence’, which I’m about to collate and present to the doubters. It still raises a huge question: what does it mean if your cherished ancestors have to be rubbed out of your tree? When you go gathering up your ancestors, you don’t just gather names and dates. You find real people and their stories, and in some sense, they come alive for you. All the research I did among other family historians for my recent book Growing Your Family Tree confirms that I’m not a sad isolated case in having this experience. And communing with the ancestors has been a part of human culture worldwide since earliest times. There is a kind of link that is forged, and a resonance generated between earlier generations and our present lives.
However, if the evidence against proves incontrovertible, then I’ll have to relinquish Edward and Maria. I think we should never invest quite so much of ourselves in our ancestors that ‘losing’ them diminishes our identity. Facing uncertainty in any sphere – science, relationships, religion – is all a part of the quest for knowledge. In family history, there’s always the issue of whether a father really is a father. I’ve come across studies which say that as many as one in three children are not the product of their named fathers! The links you make, in family history, may sometimes be to the ‘wrong’ people in terms of the DNA. And you may – I may in this case – just have to accept that, and go reconfigure. But in this case, I hope not.
See my article Voices of the Ancestors in the current issue of ‘Mind Body Spirit’ (www.watkinsbooks.com).
And more on the meaning of ancestors in our lives in Growing Your Family Tree.
Footnote – some years later, I can now confirm that we’ve found not only enough family history evidence to claim Edward Owens as our ancestor, but also the DNA to connect Debra and me genetically, which proves our common descent from him. The DNA is shared with a proven descendant of said Edward Owens.
So what’s to be done, if Edward isn’t my kin after all? It’s true that we don’t have unquestionable proof. But, on balance, I do think we have ‘reasonable evidence’, which I’m about to collate and present to the doubters. It still raises a huge question: what does it mean if your cherished ancestors have to be rubbed out of your tree? When you go gathering up your ancestors, you don’t just gather names and dates. You find real people and their stories, and in some sense, they come alive for you. All the research I did among other family historians for my recent book Growing Your Family Tree confirms that I’m not a sad isolated case in having this experience. And communing with the ancestors has been a part of human culture worldwide since earliest times. There is a kind of link that is forged, and a resonance generated between earlier generations and our present lives.
However, if the evidence against proves incontrovertible, then I’ll have to relinquish Edward and Maria. I think we should never invest quite so much of ourselves in our ancestors that ‘losing’ them diminishes our identity. Facing uncertainty in any sphere – science, relationships, religion – is all a part of the quest for knowledge. In family history, there’s always the issue of whether a father really is a father. I’ve come across studies which say that as many as one in three children are not the product of their named fathers! The links you make, in family history, may sometimes be to the ‘wrong’ people in terms of the DNA. And you may – I may in this case – just have to accept that, and go reconfigure. But in this case, I hope not.
See my article Voices of the Ancestors in the current issue of ‘Mind Body Spirit’ (www.watkinsbooks.com).
And more on the meaning of ancestors in our lives in Growing Your Family Tree.
Footnote – some years later, I can now confirm that we’ve found not only enough family history evidence to claim Edward Owens as our ancestor, but also the DNA to connect Debra and me genetically, which proves our common descent from him. The DNA is shared with a proven descendant of said Edward Owens.
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