June Update

I can't believe how long it's been since I've updated! It's been a busy few months!

I finished my Professional Learning Certificate in Genealogical Studies from the National Institute for Genealogical Studies and will be virtually attending my graduation next week!

I've also made some great contacts with dna and genealogical matches, some of whom have even become friends, and have been able to break a couple of long-standing brick walls!

One such contact passed on the lore that our mutual ancestors had been gypsies (from here on I will refer to them as Roma) in London, England, which I hadn't heard before. I asked in a DNA facebook group if there was anything particular I should look for in my dna, and was told to run the Eurogenese K13 Admixture on GedMatch, and look for South_Asian. If it was true Roma, I was told, I would probably have about 1 % because Roma originated in India. Sure enough, I was 1.18 %. I haven't looked into the dna aspect of it enough to know if that confirms it or not, but certainly the documents I've since found from England seem to support it!

And I finally got a Shared Ancestor Hint on Ancestry through my great-great-grandfather, going back to my 5th great-grandparents! This was a huge deal to me, because he was born just 5 months after his parents' wedding in 1839 and I was starting to question his paternity. I've had the paper trail done for years, but until now had ZERO confirmed dna matches on that side, outside of our 4 known family members (me, my father, my paternal grandmother, and my second cousin). Now we have a dna match, and I had actually traced his family to about his great-grandmother, so our paper trails matched up so well.

I've said it before, but I'll try to update more regularly again.

Go dtí an chéad uair eile.