What's Past Can Now Be Present - Graeme Urwin

I am writing this newsletter on the train from London, returning home to Northumberland. I have been to a conference featuring the leading lights in Financial Planning & Wealth Management in the UK.

It involved a bit of hard work, but We also had a bit of fun - here is the link to one of the photos

So, sitting here with the gentle hum of the train, my mind turns to the ancestory research that I started earlier this year. My goodness how much I have learned!

First, the DNA.

Amazing stuff this. I had chosen to begin with the ysearch (spelling intended), which traces the paternal line. This in turn is linked to the FamilyTree website and me doing my own family tree of the Urwins/Irvings/Irvines.

Approaching it from both ends as it were.

So, the many people of that name have published their DNA results on the site, and this has a system to tell you the individuals who are related to you with a x% of probability in a given timescale!

So it turns out that there are 13 exact matches on a DNA 37 marker. There are many other matches with a 36 on 37 match, but I will keep to the 37 out of 37.

Out of these 13, 12 had my name or variant, with one guy called Armstrong also making the list. This is apparently likely to be due to the fact that at some point one of his ancestors was adopted. Sounds very likely as the Armstrongs were living cheek and jowl beside the Urwins for hundreds of years.

So what does this mean and how does it help my own family research?

Well, by pressing a button, it turns out that there is a 97% probability that we shared a common ancestor within the last 8 generations - or around 300 years. This becomes 100% within 600 years.

Amazing!

So my thinking is that if any of these guys has individual family tree research going back to say 1600-1750, then this may well help me link up further. I need to check one or two things, but I am back to 1736 with a Thomas Urwin being born in Northumberland.

The Ancestry.co.uk site is excellent for tracing ancestors back to the early 1800's, and if you know of a great grandparent say being born in the late 1800's, you can use the 10 year census information to turn up lots of information. These are 1841-1901.

There is more DNA information to come  - I can hardly wait!

Handy sites:

http://ancestry.co.uk
http://www.familytreedna.com/default.aspx