Were your ethnicity estimates a surprise?

[Guy Etchells]

My wife is U4, "Ulrike", a haplotype commoner in Scandinavia and the Baltics than in Britain. It has been suggested that some of the Vikings may have brought their womenfolk with them. Maybe they had heard tales of bold English girls throwing up outside clubs and fighting with their stiletto heels at taxi-ranks, and thought they had better bring some respectable Norwegian matrons with them in their longships. I suppose it would also be nice to get some home cooking and darning done for them on the way over.

Harry

I thought that was the origin of the myth of the viking helmet, rather than being horned they had two stiletto heels piercing the helmets as a result of encounters with the women folk of the UK.
Cheers
Guy

[LizzieL]

Lizzie, tongue-in-cheek, perhaps the pillaging Vikings didn't fancy your ancestors.

Martin

So you've seen the photo of my very formidable looking great-grandmother, too

[LizzieL]

Also don't forget the Normans were in many cases Vikings (or rather Scandinavians) who had settled in Normandy, France.

Cheers
Guy

Maybe my Vikings came from my Channel Island ancestors then, they would only be about one thirtytwo'th

[LizzieW]

I wasn't surprised.  I've always suspected that my missing g.grandfather (well his origins are missing) was Jewish and sure enough it turns out I have Jewish ancestry in my DNA.  I also know that his Ancestry was probably Spanish or Portuguese and I have both those in my DNA.

Unfortunately, most of my matches on both Ancestry and 23andMe who do have Jewish ancestry too, don't respond to my requests to share their trees.    I don't know what else I can do to find him.  The one match who did respond told me that she thought many of the children born in the 1850s-1900s were illegitimate so may not be listed on the synagogue lists.  She gave me a couple of names of possible children but I followed them through the census and they are definitely not my g.grandfather.  So I'm still stuck.

[Mart 'n' Al]

Lizzie, wouldn't you expect the morals of a semi-insular group such as Jews to lead to a lower frequency of illegitimate births?  You'd think that turning up at the synagogue with a child of dubious provenance would be as welcome as a .... (Choose your own phrase)

Martin

[LizzieW]

Martin - I hadn't thought of it before, it's just that the woman who I was in contact with told me that in the 1800s/early 1900s there were lots of illegitimate children.  I'll look up her exact words.

[LizzieW]

Aah this is what she said - not exactly as I remembered it 

I have a hunch from my family tree that some of the later children registered to Moses and Rachel were actually illegitimate grandchildren, claimed as theirs so they could be welcomed into the synagogue. A Benjamin is registered 19 Oct 1860 (33 years after the last child was registered to Moses and Rachel - Solomon in 1827). I mention it because the dates match your window for your g. grandfather's birth.

My theory was that a Miss Dacosta had got very friendly with the brother of her friend a Miss Wright (actually shown on the census as friend, not visitor etc and living with Rachel Dacosta and her family) and produced my g.grandfather.  I know his mother was a Dacosta (various spellings) and he was called Wright and born in Bethnal Green, but I can't get any further - despite the great minds of the Rootschatters over the years.

[Mart 'n' Al]

Taking in illegitimate grandchildren so that you get them into the synagogue seems a caring idea, but I'm not religious and don't know about these things but it does seem odd that a synagogue would frown on the illegitimate children or rather their parents, but still commend the Grandparents. However I do think the Bible says "suffer the little children to come unto me" . It does surprise me that a very religious group would tolerate illegitimacy, but as I said, I'm not an expert.

Martin

[LizzieW]

I'm not an expert either and the quote I gave you is from someone who has traced her ancestors back to 2 x g.grandparents so, obviously more Jewish ancestry than me.  However, it still hasn't helped me trace my g.grandfather's origins. 

Doing my DNA did, however, prove what I had always suspected that many trees on Ancestry giving my g.grandfather parents had the wrong man (or is that the wrong parents?).  One of the people who is directly descended from the supposed mother of my g.grandfather did his DNA too and, not a surprise to me, there was absolutely no match between us.  He has now deleted the descendants of my g.grandfather that he had assigned to this other man and I wrote to other tree owners and most of them have also deleted the descendants, so that's one plus.