Saturday, July 23, 2022

Ancestry's new ethnicity reports

 Spotted an interesting use of DNA Painter on Ancestry detailing Ethnicity Results. I spent part of yesterday putting that together and it was very interesting. For a person with 100% English Ancestry there isn't too much to say about one's ethnicity other than it is English/Northern European. But the areas that we descend from were covered with a kilometre of ice during the ice age of 15,000 years ago so we did live somewhere else and hence have other ethnicities. They must get filtered out though as they are very ancient as most of our lines were in the British Isles or Northern Europe a long time ago. My Huguenot ancestry is probably part of that Northern European and I know they arrived in Somerset before or by the mid 1500s because they are in the parish records. That would appear to be the newest of my ancestors outside of England. At about this same time our Routledge family came out of the Highlands of Scotland and settled in the Debatable Lands (now Cumberland) but Scotland is, of course, part of the British Isles. My only mystery person is my grandmother's mother and gradually I am getting to have a look at possibilities for her. At first I thought she might be from Ireland and that still may be the case but I think more that her line was in Scotland coming to Ireland in the 1600s when Cromwell sent non-conformists to Ireland and then her line back into England from there. Time will tell on that one. 

It was an interesting couple of hours charting all of that but I must get back to doing the Protestation Returns for Devon and that will be today's work. 

Yesterday we took another van load to Salvation Army - skis, poles, and ski boots to fit the skis along with a pile of other things. Still downsizing and I am beginning to enjoy the emptier spaces as I can not keep all of these things if I find it necessary to move into a much smaller place (like one room!). So now we are into keeping what we know will be used by me and by my children and donating the rest to places that will enjoy them or for resale at Salvation Army. 

It is the weekend though and no housework until cleaning begins again on Monday.

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