General Chat

Was economical with the truth, she told her family the fathers name of her illegitimate daughter, (my mum) so I’ve drawn the conclusion that I will never know who my grandfather is and that maybe she was a bit of a loose woman.
I’m a bit disappointed to say the least but hay ho, such is life, it happens to a lot of people.
All that research and most of it is wrong
Thanks for reading this, I feel a bit better having shared it with you.

A lot of people in this situation have got a result with dna testing. The Ancestry kit has the best australia coverage. Of course it means forking out.
Good luck.

My dad was illegitimate too - as was his sister.
Dad asked her many a time who his dad was - her response was 'Juarez'.
But then, she said her mum was Spanish - hmm, Best doesn't sound too Spanish to me!

I have had my DNA tested - but that hasn't automatically led me to my father's father!
I did help me to trace my gran's dad's side back to 1208 - but the 'Best' side is a bit more difficult
I am, though 9.6% Iberian, so maybe gran's mum's family did have a bit of 'Espanol' in them.

Both dad and I have our suspicions about who his dad was. A friend of the family of the man we believe to be dad's dad, contacted me years ago to confirm this, but when I contacted the family, they didn't want to know - well it'a a bit awkward - he was married! But if it is who we think it is, he's 100% Cornish.

DNA hasn't led us to their family either - because, of course, not everyone is into genealogy - and not everyone has their DNA tested.
I fact, having my DNA tested, merely led me to someone who had 4 generations of the same family as my g grandad, in the 1700's - no-one before then, I worked back from there.

My sister, nephew and I all had our DNA tested and we haven't had one living person - not even our cousins (who we hardly know) - contact us to ask if we're related!

I am on Ancestry site and have not been matched with anyone that has or would have had the same family as me.
The puzzling bit for me is my alleged grandfather is from Reading and my grandmother is from Newcastle, how did they meet also my mum hadn’t heard of Reading until she was told in the 1930/40s that he was a respectable businessman from there.

He could have been a commercial traveller. Reading was famous for 3bs.
Biscuits, Beer and Bulbs.

My OH did an Ancestry test and I worked out that the grandfather was one of several brothers. OH's brother did a test on My Heritage for amusement and up popped a half first cousin once removed. This one lived on the continent where My Heritage is more popular. Working him back I found out which brother it was.

It is thought that he was kicked out of the family business because he fathered an illegitimate child, the business was Frame Clothiers, I’m on My Heritage and I will see if my brother will do a DNA test too.

ZZzzz, if he agrees do Ancestry rather than MH.
We,ve both had lots of really good matches on Ancestry - I copied mine onto MH when it was free to do so and got nothing of any worth. Other than the one above.
My OH has British expat relatives in France. They did the MH test as it is pushed more on the continent. They were really unhappy with the little they got.

I, too, have had lots of good matches with Ancestry including people in the UK, Australia, South America, USA and Canada.

Several of them I'd already been in touch with and met up with a few in the UK.

I can't pin some of them down to which ancestor we stem from so I'll keep plugging away.

I have had a lot of help from people on these threads too and I am grateful to them.

It is worth remembering the Ancestry DNA test is not a one off , they continue running matches indefinitely. I have had some interesting matches over a year after the original test. For those who have not used Ancestry DNA as well as basic matching they also have what they call "thru-lines" which suggests links based on common ancestors. In order to make this work you need to add in 2nd and 3rd cousins/great aunts etc. Thru lines also seems to take on board step relations as well.

Thank you RTR I won’t throw the towel in just yet :-)

I get new matches all the time as new users come onboard. However identifying the match can be difficult if folk don't upload their family trees. One of my latest close matches is a person who has found that their father was not their biological father, a big shock. As I can't identify any other person in their tree, I can only assume that it's the unknown father that I match with.

It was always a sad thing to the family that great-grandmother was widowed twice.

Yeh, she might have been , had she taken the trouble to marry either of them.

She made a big deal of one of her daughters having what she thought to be an upper class name. She was the second he had given it to, without divorcing or burying the first.

Sharron that is a bit like my grandparents, not bothering to divorce or bury first, one grandfather married 4 or 5 times, we think he liked wedding cake.

Makes my granny seem like a saint! :-D
(We'll ignore my finding her in prison in 1939)

boy, were my grandparents and other ancestors boring!!

All they seem to have done was lie about their ages!

Mine lied about her surname!
When she was arrested, she gave 4 different ones - one was the correct one, 2 of the others I knew (dad's stepdad - 3 years later, and the one we believe was dad's dad).
The last one was possibly the 'man of bad influence' the judge mentioned.

They had to cross through her registration, and re-register her . :-D

My mother was born when her parents were 48. She was the last of grandfather's ten children, which we always thought were grandmother's ten children as well.

It turned out that they married when they were both thirty-two and the first child had been born about six months earlier, to grandfather and grandmother's fifteen year old sister! Dirty old bastard, I say!

Ooo-err. Did they reveal who the father was?

It was his brother's wife who told us in the sixties, I don't think she was supposed to. Of course, the rest of the family said she was a meddling old bat but the brother certainly was not born to my grandmother.