Sunday, October 27, 2024

BIFHSGO Conference 2024 - Day Two

 The Breakout Rooms are quite interesting mostly listening to what the experts are saying. I have some work that needs to be done in Ireland and these individuals are excellent and will contact them to do the work. I just had that thought yesterday. Hopefully they are in the business of doing such things. 

I was going to ask a question in Galway breakout group but it was busy and I am not really in much of a rush - it involves the Blake yDNA group at FT DNA - a curiosity. Will investigate that. The yDNA study for Blake at FT DNA is quite interesting and I have a couple of investigative thoughts for them. There are two results for Big Y for my line and both are known to be ancient to the British Isles. Going before the early 1300s is unlikely in this name grouping as I think my line acquired that surname in this time period possibly in a marriage as there are likely candidates - a John Blake in the Manor Records. There is continued correspondence within the wills of the Andover Blake family with the Blake family first in Oxford and later in Wiltshire. Must get into those Manor Books. My latin has improved considerably this last year as I made it my concentration during the time of lessening sight and then cataract surgery and recovery. Making it a priority was a really good idea. I think it made the recovery time much smoother as I still had something to work at and my daughter helped me until I could easily spend time on the computer again. She is also learning latin with me. She has so many languages now that she is either fluent in or could become fluent in readily so Latin didn't seem like a big addition. It only takes a few minutes a day really to stay with the course but to become good one needs to do more than that perhaps up to one hour a day as a minimum for this 79 year old and sometimes I put in more time. 

I then headed into Antrim Breakout Room and the two people there were excellent and knowledgeable. I do not actually have a question. I have not really looked at the Irish research possibilities; I just have family lore in that regard. Now I am in the Dublin Breakout Room and again the people are excellent. Dublin interests me because the close match (he has only tested a few markers though but the first few are quite distinctive for my line) to my brothers' yDNA is there; at least when  he tested at FT DNA. So continuing with the Breakout Room in Dublin but once again no questions on my part.

This has been an excellent Conference. I do find these Conferences to be really good and the online feature is perfect. Stirring myself out and about is something I mostly do in my hunter/gatherer process of acquiring food although I could order it as well but I am enjoying the walk up to the Grocery Store and Drug Store as needed. 

Back to the Siderfin Books tomorrow. I am actually pleased to find the errors in the published book (not pleased that I made them of course) and will correct those errors and put an errata page into the front of the corrected copy for those who do not want to download it again. The computer is such a lovely addition to our lives in that I got into computers in the mid 1960s and have been more or less attached to one ever since as we bought a home computer in the early 80s so just a six year break for me from computers. 

Spending this time on Irish genealogy has been a really good idea. I have family lore that my maternal great grandmother (mother of my maternal grandmother) was of Irish descent. She was born in Birmingham though likely as her husband identified Birmingham as her birthplace. I have been looking at the ethnicity as the percentage of Irish is surprisingly high in my siblings (not so much in my case) but also French/German which is where my higher level occurs. I had never thought of the Palatines in Ireland but this talk now on (which is excellent actually) is talking about My Ancestors were Irish - or were they? It is something that has often been in my mind whenever I chanced to think about it actually. Her favourite song was "Donny Boy" and well remembered by my maternal grandmother as her mother died when she was only 11 years of age. Her hair was black as a raven my grandmother said and her eyes blue and she had the white skin of the Irish apparently. So was she Irish? are only the Irish black haired, blue eyed and white skinned? I wonder now about the Palatine which would account for my large enough percentage of French/German although by far English predominates with these others 20% or less). The surname was Lawley (Lawler is found in Ireland but Joseph Lawley was likely in Shropshire for more than his own generation) in the 1700s but I can not tell very much about Joseph's wife (Joseph was the father of Ellen Lawley who married Thomas Roberts whose daughter Ellen married Thomas Taylor the likely parents of my great grandmother Ellen Taylor). I am now learning that the Huguenots also came to Ireland and I definitely have Huguenot ancestry. So very very interesting this talk. I need to look at this Irish percentage though carefully as my Charley family was also said to be Charley and coming down on the maternal side as well with Mary Charly marrying John Pincombe in 1767. the combination of these two lines could account for Irish perhaps since they both occur in my mother's lines. Still looking for Joseph Lawley's marriage. Back to the talk. Quite fascinating actually. I must extract the ethnicity information as it is a changing item through the years as more and more blocks of individuals who have lived in areas for a long time are available for comparison. 

The last talk was actually quite fascinating. I did ask a question finally whether the speaker had looked at the % German ethnicity and % Irish ethnicity within the Palatine community still living in Ireland. He had not and that more or less answered my question; this is possibly an isolated population within another country that has maintained their cultural and ethnic heritage for long enough to have given me a great grandmother who passed my mtDNA to me likely from a planter family (original location Ayrshire/Argyllshire) coming to Ireland in the time of Cromwell and then much later marrying into a Palatine family in the late 1700s with a grandaughter that was mother to my grandmother. I may yet solve the ancestry of my maternal great grandmother's line and that of her grandfather Joseph Lawley in Shropshire England. I have inherited quite a bit from this particular ancestor (my grandmother's mother) by comparing the flow within five siblings of the DNA from our ancestors. I have a large portion of German/French ancestry that I really cannot account for (still it is in the 20% range) which means it isn't that far back. But a population that retains its German ethnicity within Ireland could have produced an ancestor for me that appears Irish (but I have only a small percentage of Irish, but my siblings have more) but actually carries German ancestry from the Palatines. Interesting thought actually and I would not have come to that without the discussions this weekend. Now I just need to find time to look at that. I am busy writing books it would appear.

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