Genealife in Lockdown – Revisiting DNA Results

I am undertaking the blogging challenge for National Family History Month called Genealife in Lockdown. Technically we are not in lockdown in South Australia. We are locked in as we can’t move across many of our state borders and have a few restrictions. Essentially it is life a the new normal. A hard lockdown for a week meant we have been able to reopen up. Following is my week 2 blog.

Like many family historians I have undertaken a number of DNA tests and up loaded them to the many different sites. One morning during the brief state lockdown I was reviewing the DNA matches to see if something had changed. As any Genie is aware a large majority of our matches have no trees and most of the names that are not recognizable. This day I was going to get lucky. I decided to look more closely at simkins124 and his tree.

The match that I decide needed a second look at what was simkins124, a distant relative match of around 26cMs matching at one segment. Not really a very large match, it rated a second look as there were over 8,000 names listed in the tree. Shared matches suggested that we matched on the paternal side of the family, specifically the LOADES and REED line. The tree had one name leapt off the page “Sarah Ann BOWLES”. A further look provided the information that she was born in Great Yarmouth in the 1840’s from a family that had lived and worked in Great Yarmouth going back into the 1730’s. This was hopeful as the LOADES line had been traced back to Great Yarmouth in the early 1800’s.

So why look at the BOWLES name. In 1796 Deborah BOWLES married Obadiah LOADS and they had a child Edward LOADES born in 1798. This entry into the parish records had been discussed and debated as to whether it was the birth record of Edward LOADS my 3rd great grandfather. Many of us had disregarded this birth record as there as no middle name Waller in the record and we could not find any evidence of where the Waller name came from. The majority of us believed that it must have been a surname of someone in the family, this has so far been an elusive search. We believe that Waller has some significance to Edward as he included Waller as the middle name for all his children. No records or family stories explain where or why Waller is used as a middle name. The spelling of LOADES also varied. Evidence from further records highlights that the spelling of LOADES or LOADS was used interchangeably in the 1800’s and depended to a large degree on what was documented in the parish records. After over 15 years research I have been able to confirm who are the parents of Edward LOADES born in the late 1790’s. Without the DNA sample this may never have been possible, it would have been one of those “could be” the parents. Unfortunately, for Edwards his father I still haven’t got any further where was he born and when did he die. Certainly, we know more about Deborah BOWLES and that she remarried in 1807. So the hunt continues.

Deborah BOWLES was born to Edward BOWLES and Elizabeth EDWARDS, who married in the 1750’s. The Parish records for Norfolk are accessible on line and you can view a digital copy of them. This is especially useful when checking records as not all will be transcribed correctly. Doing a tree from Deborah BOWLES back through the parish records provide the link between Sarah Ann BOWLES and Deborah. Deborah is her great aunt. The DNA match confirmed that Simpkins124 and I share common ancestors: Edward BOWLES and Elizabeth EDWARDS.

The tree demonstrated that the common ancestor for simkins124 and myself is Edward BOWLES and Elizabeth Edwards. Now I have many hours of rabbit holes and research as I follow the BOWLES and EDWARDS lines, along with the WRAGG family who are half brothers and sisters to Edward. I could be lost down this hole for a while.

Happy hunting.