Genealogy Chat

Maggie I take your point about fathers being more likely to be wrong than mothers...but I do have a child in my tree born to a different mother than the one on his birth certificate. (Illegitimate, family members took him on and registered him as their own child). I still want to know why this man told Sue that you cannot trace men through their genes? The Y chromosome is an easily-identified gene, which is as accurate at pinpointing a male line, as is the mitochondria of a female. OC

The female lines on my tree have been some of the most interesting ones. One of my family names has been very rewarding to research but when I look at the generations back on that line it is the women who marry into it and their ancestors who have given me the really interesting results. Like just about everyone I suppose I have a lot of women on my tree with first names only but my own maiden name only gets me back for certain to the early 1800s. If I'd only been interested in following that then I would miss an awful lot of my tree. It's odd sometimes how family likenesses can pop up. For example, my friend and near neighbour has turned out oddly enough to be my half third cousin (bit remote I know but fun to discover). One day my daughter was round at her house playing with her half fourth cousins when my friend's father was visiting. He hadn't met my (then little) girl before and didn't know she was in the house but was really startled when she came down stairs and met him suddenly. It seems she was the spitting image of his sister when she was small. So a close physical resemblance can exist between two people separated by a couple of generations and several degrees of cousinship. One of the fascinating things for me about doing Family History is finding out about the real people when I can and wondering what we have in common and whether we share traits in common. I've always felt a sort of bond with my maternal grandmother's father......he died some 30 years before I was born but he was an artist like me and his palette is one of my precious possessions. Sue

Hi I would just like to add my comments on following the female line (or blood line). My daughter became very ill when she was about 11years old (now 21), we found out she had renal failure and need a transplant. As any parents would, we were both tested for compatibility, to give our daughter a kidney. to our shock neither of us had the same blood group as our daughter. This for a moment caused doubts and suspicions from her father and his family until it was explained by the doctor that the blood type would not necessaraly be the same as the parent but it would have been passed down the line. My mother was tested and has the same blood group as my daughter and was a compatibley match with my daughter. Fortunatley a kidney was made available before my mum had to go to surgery. Don't disregard the female line, it is very important, especially for me. Beverley X

Another avenue not to ignore is previous or subsequent marriages of a direct ancestor, I have a case of step cousins marrying. The family emigrated to Canada and relatives out there (contacted via GR) had done research over many years but had never made the connection.

And in my family, the tradition seems to be to take a second wife from a pool of left-over unmarried female relatives, or as my dear brother puts it, the ugly ones! OC