DNA test with Ancestry...a puzzle

What a dreadful shock for the family. Good that they looked after Mum.

I have no idea why he was walking alone quite some way from home, but they assumed he fell over the precipice because he was drunk. I think this is pure speculation, as he may have had a stroke and died from exposure. He was 57 years old and it was 9th March (so very cold).
He left behind 8 children, youngest 17 years old. But this was a lovely family who cared for their oldies, so his widow lived with her children after his death.

Yes, terrible. His children would be adults (if they survived childhood) but was his wife still alive?

That sounds horrific, poor man and his poor family, Chestnut.

Oopsadaisy1 There are tutorials and forums on Ancestry explaining everything. You just have to spend the time studying it and trying to understand it, but it's not exactly straightforward.
Try the Ancestry Academy and scroll down to Understanding DNA
Ancestry Academy

My DNA profile has changed again, one parent 22%Scottish the other parent is now 4% Scottish and has more Norway, Danish in it. Before the latest update it was pretty much 22% Scottish from each parent.

How can that be? I’ve gone from Welsh to Scottish and now that has almost disappeared from one parent.

I think I will have to contact Ancestry and find out. Surely the Parental bits would stay the same if they had done it properly in the first place?

Callistemon21

Interesting Chestnut

It does look a lovely property. Were they tollkeepers?

(Autocorrect keeps changing that to goalkeepers)

In 1841 the father was shown as an ag lab and living at the Old Turnpike with his wife and 5 children (all under 10 years) and his elderly mother in law.

Strangely, he seems to have a connection with the English/Welsh border, because many years later in 1867 the newspaper reported he was found near Chirk, dead at the foot of a precipice, so he may have fallen into Offa’s Dyke as it ran across that exact place. This was a sad and sudden end for my ancestor.

Germanshepherdsmum

How wonderful to be able to identify a house your ancestors lived in!

I have identified most of the houses my ancestors lived in, if they were country dwellings or in small towns. The ones that are mostly gone were in cities, because they were either bombed or demolished.

And I found that some of my ancestors lived in pubs that still exist. We’ve said we’ll pop in for a pint when we’re up North again.

I found out from an Ancestry census search recently that DH’s great-grandad lived in our local curry house. When it was just the house without the curry, of course.

I found a picture online of the road where my great-grandparents lived in in the 1800s.

Their address was on the census form and I found it on the Francis Frith website.
If I'd known when we visited that village years ago, I would have looked for the actual house.

How wonderful to be able to identify a house your ancestors lived in!

Interesting Chestnut

It does look a lovely property. Were they tollkeepers?

(Autocorrect keeps changing that to goalkeepers)

Callistemon21

^Oswestry did indeed change its allegiance between Wales and England several times in the Middle Ages (its Welsh name is Croesoswallt)^

I stand corrected! Thank you Lexisgranny

I have ancestors from the Oswestry/Llansilin area and they were literally living right on the border in the Old Toll Bar (or Old Turnpike) at Rhydycroesau. Lovely property which is still there on the border of England and Wales!

Maggiemaybe, dh was invited to get an update on his minor percentage of ‘Viking’ DNA the other day, which he did - it wasn’t very enlightening at all, hardly more than he’d already had.
Of course he had to,pay, so I suspect that it’s at least partly an income generator.
I dare say the mere mention of ‘Viking’, rather than Danish or whatever, attracts people to pay to find out that they’re (not) directly descended from Erik Bloodaxe.

Oswestry did indeed change its allegiance between Wales and England several times in the Middle Ages (its Welsh name is Croesoswallt)

I stand corrected! Thank you Lexisgranny

nanna8

With the new dna results my Welsh ancestry has gone up to 20%. Fair enough,as I know my gt gt grandparents were both Welsh but it was intriguing to see some of it came from my Dad’s side. The nearest I can get from those ancestors was Oswestry but I believe that was once part of Wales way back when. It is certainly fascinating.

I think Oswestry has always been on the English side of the border.

They must have criss-crossed the border for work etc; DH's ancestors were border people from a little further north than that but more Welsh than English. They had relocated from one side of the border to another on various censuses.

It’s been easy for me to tell which parental chart is which though, because I know all the Welsh is from my mother. The other components are fairly evenly split.

I find the constant “updates” on Ancestry a bit irritating. I started off approximately 30% each English, Scottish and Welsh, the rest Scandinavian, and the English component was all North East England, which seemed spot on. Now I’m down to less than 20% English, and all from the Midlands, though my family has no known connections to that area.

I have yet to do this type of DNA test - it’s on the list - you’ve all urged me on! - but I don’t suppose it’d tell me where dd2 got her colouring - that creamy-olive skin which to me is Mediterranean, or at least Southern European. It’s quite unlike anyone else on either my or dh’s side.

My pet theory is washed-up Armada sailor, since a set of GGPs on both my sides came from separate areas where such a thing would have been possible.

Years ago now dh and I did an ancestral DNA test via Oxford ancestors, which was very interesting, but I’m sure the science must have moved on so much by now. We both had the same male paternal ancestor - shared with around 45% of native Europeans (so he was evidently a busy chap) but different maternal ones. His went back a mere 20,000 years or so, to SW France, and was relatively common.

Mine went back 45,000 years to NW Greece, shared with 11% of native Europeans, including Cheddar Gorge Man.

Nana 8 I realise that you are primarily talking about DNA, but it sounds as if you have been doing some family history and I thought this might help.

North Wales/Shropshire is quite a challenge for the researcher. For example the area around Oswestry of which you speak has many small villages with Welsh names even though they are in Shropshire eg Trefonen, Treflach, Nantmawr, and Rhydycroesau! In the days when electoral rolls were taken house to house manually, places of birth that were given were often,to say the least, flexible, as a result of small villages and hamlets that were on boundaries that the average person would not know about.

Oswestry did indeed change its allegiance between Wales and England several times in the Middle Ages (its Welsh name is Croesoswallt). There is a Facebook Group called Oswestry memories which gives you a lot of historical detail.

(About 25 miles from Oswestry is an area which has always been in Wales but the county has been in Flintshire,Denbighshire, Clwyd,and Wrexham County Borough!)

The Irish and Norwegian might have a link Lemsip. Norwegian Vikings sailed to Ireland for slaves around the North of Scotland, they also took Irish slaves to Iceland as well. I have the same trade roots and lost my Danish and Swedish Vikings. Icelandic friends tell me that a common slur in Iceland is to call people Irish slaves if they have auburn hair.
I have lost a lot of Scots and gained Western European. I do have one family that might have come across with the Normans.

well that was various of course! just pointing out I wasn't much of a scot any more. lol.
includes

17% Ireland and 7% norway 1% basque

Where did the other 22% go, lemsip? That’s a big change.

I was 98%Welsh 2% Irish, update not Irish but 2% Scottish