Marriages in the 1850s

The marriages at All Saints Church for the period 1850 to 1859 have now been transcribed and added to the website.

Marriages in the 1840s

The marriages at All Saints Church for the period 1840 to 1849 have now been transcribed and added to the website. I've also noted down in the comments column if I spotted witnesses later getting married to each other!

CUTLER and RANDALL WW1 profiles

New to the website today:

• Serviceman profile for Arthur Edwin Cutler, thanks to Peter Denchfield
• Serviceman profile for Daniel Randall, who passed away 100 years ago today, one day before Armistice Day

Imprecise Science Part 2: MyHeritage

After the less-than-encouraging analysis of my AncestryDNA matches to see what percentage of my matches also match my parents (only 69%), I took a look at MyHeritage. These are matches obtained by uploading our raw test data from the AncestryDNA tests to theMyHeritage website (currently a free process), rather than by taking MyHeritage's native tests, so results may be impacted by that. MyHeritage is also a newer entrant to DNA testing/matching.

Suffice to say, MyHeritage currently makes AncestryDNA's match processing look good.

I have 97 matches at MyHeritage (excluding parents and great-uncle), so a much smaller sample size than AncestryDNA. It's just as well, as MyHeritage doesn't currently have any tools for working with or analysing your matches (and there aren't any external tools for this either as far as I know), so you have to look at each match manually and record the necessary details to do any analysis.

4 of my matches, or 4%, also match my Mum.

Another 4 of my matches, or 4%, also match my Dad.

So that's a 92% rate for false positives for me and/or false negatives on my parents.


Of the 4 maternal matches, MyHeritage reports me as having more (generally around double!) shared cMs with that match than my Mum does for 3 of them. The paternal matches were a bit more plausible, only one of those showed me as having more shared cMs than my Dad did.

Side note - there's no ability to search matches by birthplaces in their tree at MyHeritage, so no easy way to locate any Wing descendants yet.

[UPDATE Jan 2018: MyHeritage rolled out a new matching algorithm in January 2018. I now have 1476 matches in total, with 590 or 40% shared with my Mum, 452 or 31% shared with my Dad, and therefore 434 or 29% false postives/negatives. This is much more in line with the match percentages I obtained from AncestryDNA. Well done, MyHeritage, the new algorithm looks much more feasible].

Imprecise Science Part 1: AncestryDNA

Are all your DNA matches really a match?

Debbie Kennett recently published her methodology and results when comparing her own AncestryDNA match results to her parents’ matches in order to identify false matches (either a false positive at child level, so identical by chance, or a false negative at parent level, or some horrible algorithmic glitch). Debbie’s post built on analysis done by Blaine Bettinger and other DNA genealogists and she has links to their respective results in her post.

 As I have tested myself and both my parents I thought I’d do the same. There's some extra commentary at the end regarding Wing one-place study implications, just to keep this on-topic for this blog!

Summary

Of my 14,522 matches:

• 4,470, or 31%, are not shared with either parent
• 4,528, or 31%, are shared with my dad (which represents 44% of his matches)
• 5,547, or 38%, are shared with my mum (which represents 34% of her matches)

15 cM looks like a good cutoff point above which any match is almost certainly going to be legitimate. Sadly only 3.75% of my matches are above that level! 

Conversely, any matches below 7cM are more likely to be identical by chance rather than identical by descent.

This is pretty similar to the kind of picture Debbie saw with her AncestryDNA results.

Data

Here are my personal matches, broken down by the cM total length:

Those 3 matches of 50cM or more are my parents plus my grandmother’s brother.

Of those 21 matches of 25cM or more, only 1 has a tree of more than a couple of generations. I’ll save that rant for another time…

Here are my matches broken down into slightly more cM bins, along with what does and doesn’t match at least one of my parents:

See that wee outlier? I have a 25 cM match that on the face of it doesn’t look like a real match. I’ve done some digging into this one – her kit is administered by her daughter, and the daughter IS a match to both me and my father. The daughter and my Dad have a 17cM match, yet I match to the daughter at 18cM (it's over 2 segments, not 1 as my Dad's match is) and the mum at 25cM! I’m still trying to get my head around that.

What Now?

I knew there were some false matches knocking around, but I’m a bit disappointed it’s as high as it is to be honest. It does mean that if I’m doing any further analysis of my matches, eg following Twigs of Yore’s visualisation exercises using NodeXL, I should definitely start with a match list that’s had those false positives removed if possible rather than using a raw match list. Not only would the list be 30% shorter and more manageable to handle, it would be more accurate.

Our DNA raw data has also been uploaded to FamilyTreeDNA, MyHeritage and GedMatch and I’m planning to run comparisons on my match results at each of those places (update: follow the links to see the comparisons). At MyHeritage, I have an alleged 94cM total match that is not a match to either of my parents! I suspect that in reality I do not have a gorgeous blonde Norwegian cousin (with whom I apparently also somehow share 0% ethnicity), I think something must be awry in the algorithms.

Wing

I currently have 8 matches at AncestryDNA who have a family tree that has someone born in Wing Buckinghamshire in it. That doesn’t mean we’re related through Wing (or even at all), although you can bet I’m keen to find out one way or the other. In one case it looks like I can tell – one of them (who even bears one of my Wing surnames!) isn’t a match to either of my parents so most likely he is a false positive match and we are not related. Is that a sad trombone I hear?

Inbox Zero

Inbox Zero, that blissful state in which your inbox is empty because all the incoming emails have been dealt with, filed or deleted.

You know what's not so blissful? When you inadvertently achieve Inbox Zero because something has gone horribly awry in your email account and the emails are simply not there anymore at all. Specifically, in this case, the archive of many years' worth of emails and information from others with ancestors from Wing.

I should hopefully be able to restore the vast majority of those from an offsite backup. Hopefully. Just keep breathing...

UPDATE: it turns out that no, you cannot open an offsite backup of an .ost file. Insert bad word here. :( 

In sickness and in health

I have a new section up on the website that focuses on health - or, as is generally the case, the lack thereof. Head over to learn about Charlotte Cottage, smallpox, typhoid, accidents, mental health issues and the like.

As I mention on the introductory page it's a bit challenging to gather global information, however anecdotes from your own Wing families are very welcome. If you have someone in your tree with a particular health issue, who had an newsworthy accident, or who died from something out of the ordinary, please email me and let me know.

Bandages and slippers

Very brief update - there's a couple of new WWI pages on the website! Read about the Rimington brothers' war service, and details of Wing VADs.

FYNES, GASKINs and some sights to see

Boy, it's been a long time since I told you what I was up to. I have been adding little bits to the website here and there, like some gravestones for the FYNES and GASKIN families. The biggest addition lately has been a timeline showing images of All Saints Church through the ages - well, through the comparatively recent postcard age of 1902 onwards! Check it out and let me know what you think. I'll have some further postcards to add to it in a few week's time.

I do have a tendency to get stuck thinking about projects rather than just getting stuck in to them, so I also reorganised my one-place study to-do lists - including consolidating them into a single list. This might sound a little like the opposite of getting stuck in, but I'm hoping the list will take the decision-making out of the equation. All I have to do is just slowly work my way through the extremely long list, completing each project and bringing all that lovely new information to you on the website. Wish me luck!

PEASE please!

In the course of looking at the PEASE men that served in WW1 it all gets a bit confusing. Perhaps you have a snippet of info that might help?

There is a William George T Pease, son of George, born on 25 August 1885 (assuming I have the correct WW1 record matched to the correct man). Can anyone confirm this birthdate, and does anyone know what the T stands for?

There is also a William son of James, also born in 1885. Does anyone have an exact birthdate for him?

The Wesleyan Methodist chapel

I came across a new resource, the 1873 Returns of accommodation provided in Wesleyan Methodist Chapels, available at My Wesleyan Methodist Ancestors, that might be of interest to other UK one-place studiers. It was a nationwide survey and will tell you whether there was a chapel in your place and the number of seatings. Wing held 411, and I've added that snippet to my Methodists page.

The voyage of the Thetis 1848

It's finally happened - I have finally published a page about the voyage of the Thetis from London to Sydney in 1848, its precious cargo of 24 Wing emigrants and what became of them in Australia. Who gave birth on board? Who returned to Wing? Who was shot to death? Find out here.

As a side note, our Wing folk weren't the only precious things on board. The 17 Jun 1848 issue of the New Zealander includes the calamitous news that the Thetis was carrying English newspapers up to 8 February on board, but with "a most unpardonable disregard to the interests of the colonies to which they were consigned made away with the papers thus confided, handing them over to the passengers of homeward bound ships which they spoke somewhere about the equator. This is abominable, as Parliament was to reassemble on the 3rd, and but for this nefarious deprivation we might probably have learnt the issue of the second reading of the bill for our new constitution." Strong words indeed!

A little bit broken

If you are visiting the website you might get some 404s, or notice that page and image links are a bit squiffy. I've just moved server and there are still a few glitches to iron out. Hopefully I'll have everything tidied up soon.

Out!

I've been reading through old issues of the Leighton Buzzard Observer and have transcribed some 1863 cricket reports for a new Cricketers page on the website. Sounds like Wing wasn't bad! Did any of your ancestors play? Some of these reports are particularly interesting as they are farm vs farm, meaning you may learn your ancestor's employer.

An officer of Wing

Today marks the 100th anniversary of the WW1 death of William Godfrey Willoughby Garforth, estate agent to the Rothschilds. You can read about William on the website. He was a public schoolboy and I am very grateful to the Archivist of Charterhouse School who provided me with information and photos about William.

Twin brothers in arms

1914 only saw a couple of Wing-connected war casualties but unfortunately the same could not be said of 1915 and subsequent years. Today sees the 100th anniversary of the death of Harold Vallentine, the first to die in 1915, who served along with his twin brother Claud. Claud also died in the war in 1917, and a profile of the brothers is now available on the website.

A 1920s adoptee

We're looking for your help. John GREEN lived in Wing as a child and is believed to have been born in Wing in 1926. He was adopted (John Green is his adoptive name) and his adoptive family possibly lived in Wing through to the early 1940s. But that's all we know, or think we know, about John's early life - he went on to join the military in 1944, had a successful career and ten children, and has since passed away.

John's grandson is keen to see if we can find out any more. Perhaps you are a Wing old-timer and remember John and his family living in Wing? Perhaps you have an illegitimate baby boy born into one of your Wing families around 1926 who seems to disappear? Perhaps you have an orphaned boy and you don't know what became of him? If you have any information or potential leads, please email me. It doesn't matter how small, it may be just what we need to confirm or refute a theory or perhaps will fit together with other pieces of information to provide us with a breakthrough.

Football during WW1

I've updated the footballers page with the names of a few November 1914 players in a Linslade & District vs Yorks & Lancs Regt match. The newspaper report was useful on two counts as it demonstrates these three men were not currently serving in the war. It would be a more useful clue if Smith had been named in full - was he Samuel Smith from the war memorial?

WW1 newspapers

I've recently been going through the WW1-era editions of the Bucks Herald. Some interesting changes in reporting during this time:

• Any marriages of servicemen may include their regiment - handy!
• The annual Flower Show/Fete at Ascott began to feature more war-related demonstrations (eg Red Cross), and was cancelled from 1916 since the August Bank Holiday was cancelled.
• Oh, the woe - each year a letter to the editor would appear from the Master of the Hunt at Ascott asking farmers to take down wire so this year's hunts could proceed without injury. Once we hit WW1, the letter always included specific comment that the huntsmen now serving at the front were extremely keen to see that the hunts continue for the amusement of those at home (oh yes, I'm sure this was foremost in servicemen's minds) and so the horses and hounds didn't rust (I'm paraphrasing here).
• Reports of military tribunals begin to appear - I'm sad (I'd say devastated but in the context of the overall tragedy of war that seems very selfish of me) that generally these don't name names, however in a number of cases the descriptions of the men seem specific enough that it might just be possible to identify one or two. 
• There's many war-specific committees being established, including the Bucks Women's County War Agricultural Committee which was responsible for getting women to sign up for land work. Reports were periodically published stating the numbers signed up in each parish.

 And in other news, I've just published a page of some very early international immigrants to Wing found in 15th century  tax and fealty oath records.

Update-a-palooza

Here's a whole assortment of small updates that I had forgotten to tell you about, and other things rescued from their perpetual draft state and published (better to share them as is than wait until they are a perfect and complete record!). In historical order:


For those of you interested in early Wing, there's a new page with some extracts from the 16th-century churchwardens accounts that name residents. There's also some new pages about the history of All Saints Church (previously published elsewhere online). I've illustrated these with several photos taken on my trip to Wing in September 2013.

The marriages for 1838 and 1839 have been added.
 
An extract from the 1848 Topographical Dictionary of England has been added to the Gazetteers page, along with Wing's entry from the 1813 Magna Britannia.

I found the service record for Charles CARTER in the WO363 series and he's been added to the 19th century servicemen list and the Wesleyan Methodist pages. He also had a monobrow but I don't exactly have a page for that.....

New photos have been added to existing pages, such as the millstones that pave the lych-gate which can now been seen on the Milling page.

Sidney CUTLER has been added to the 20th century servicemen page as he joined the Territorials in 1928 (he served in WW1 too but I haven't updated that page for my most recent finds yet).

There's a new section in Explorations - leisure! This currently features some footballers who you may have seen earlier on this blog.