DNA, Yay Yay Yay

Ahem... I'm very bad at this blogging gig. I said I'd be back to post and then I just sort of wandered off...

My main gift for Christmas 2015 was an Ancestry DNA test kit, and I got that sucker into the mail just as quickly as I could. The 6-8 week processing time threatened to drag forever, but in time my results came through.

It has been amazing. I wanted to get my DNA into as many of the big databases as possible, so I downloaded my raw DNA data and uploaded it to Gedmatch and FTDNA. I opted to pay for FTNDA's features to get access as quickly as possible.

The first person I reached out to got back to me swiftly. We're connected through my mother's father. She is researching an apparent genetic illness in her branch and asked if we have any instances of it in our branch. Well, we're quite a sizeable branch so I reached out to my great aunt to see if she'd ever heard of anyone with the condition in our family, but it seems to have skipped us. In the course of the conversation, she told me the family was having a reunion that very weekend, and thanks to that fortuitous phone call, I was able to go. I loved spending the day with my Wilton cousins. They're great people.

Other DNA matches were also on Mum's side - cousins also descended from her Robertson/McGhee ancestors. It's a great feeling to check off those branches as confirmed by DNA.

Then I found some matches on my Dad's side. My pet project is my great great grandmother Harlettee Louisa Groombridge, and I connected with a cousin descended from one of her brothers. That was awesome in its own right, but then we had a mutual match, and I connected with a descendant of Harlettee's son Frederick. I was thrilled. It's a dream to be able to trace Harlettee's descendants and fill out her tree.

The last of my grandparents lines to get a match was my grandmother, Jessie Rose Hanniver, but that finally came about five months after my test was done, and a second match popped up within the same week.

I've been looking at a fan chart to see where my gaps are. I hope to get some matches to the Wilton line beyond Thomas Wilton/Sarah Constable to confirm those lines, and to the Patersons beyond Robert Paterson and Eleanor Dunwoodie, and to the Lowery line beyond George Edward Lowery and Isobella Johanna Park, and with that all my great grandparents will be confirmed too.

It's so exciting!

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Got You On My Tree, Neighbour

Who's that? Oh, just a cousin of mine.

Ok, not quite.

The story goes like this:

Eliza Clapton is my Great Great Grandmother. She married Nathaniel Higginbottom, their daughter Jessie Higginbottom married John Hanniver, and my grandmother Rose was a product of that marriage.

Whenever we spoke about the Clapton branch of the family, my cousin Don would ask "Are we related to Eric Clapton?". One day, with time on my hands, I set out to prove that we weren't. I failed.

Eric Clapton's Ancestry

Eric Clapton is not a stage name. He was born Eric Patrick Clapton, the son of Patricia Molly Clapton and a father who was absent from his life from the beginning. He was raised by his maternal grandmother, Rose nee Mitchell, and her second husband, Jack Clapp, in Surrey. Reginald Cecil Clapton was Rose's first husband, and was the father of Patricia (and grandfather of Eric).

Reginald Cecil Clapton was born in Madras, India, in 1900. He was the son of Augustus Oliver Clapton and Marie M. Haire. He died in 1933.

Augustus Oliver Clapton was born in Winchcombe, Gloucestershire in 1867. He was the son of James Clapton and Melina Wilkins.

James Clapton was born in Winchcombe, Gloucestershire in 1833. He was the son of John Clapton and Dinah Skinner.

John Clapton was born in Winchcombe, Gloucestershire in 1802. I have not uncovered any information about his parents, so the line stops there. 

Eliza Clapton's Ancestry

Eliza Ann Clapton was born in Avoca, Victoria in 1856. Her parents were Charles Clapton and Sarah Barratt.

Charles Clapton was born in Oxfordshire, England in 1818, the son of Thomas Clapton and Mary Morris. He married his first wife, Sarah Painting, at Shipton-Under-Wychwood, Oxfordshire, and his second wife Sarah Barratt at Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire.

Thomas Clapton was born in Oxfordshire circa 1790. He married Mary Morris at Guiting Power, Gloucestershire, and resided at Lyneham, Oxford at the time of the 1841 and 1851 censuses.

So What's It All Mean?

It means that, around the beginning of the 19th century, Eric Clapton's ancestors lived in Winchcombe, Gloucestershire, and my Clapton ancestors lived in the Guiting Power, Oxfordshire area. Distance: 5.7 miles.

I can't conclusively rule out (distant, very very distant) cousinship. At the very least, they were close enough to be called neighbours.

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The Sad Demise of Maria Hanniver

Trove is the most aptly named site on the internet. Trove is the National Library of Australia's online searchable archive of newspapers, journals, pictures and photos and more, and it is a veritable treasure trove of fascinating history.

While digging around on Trove, I found two articles relating to my Great Great Great Grandmother, Maria Hanniver. Born Maria Feeny in Ireland in 1830, she was the daughter of Edward Feeny, a Farmer. On the 6th of June 1854, at St. George's Church, Dublin she married John Hanniver. His occupation was given as "Gentleman"; hers was not recorded. Jane Feeny and William Morrison were the witnesses to the marriage, and one week later they were married in the same church with Maria and John as their witnesses.

John served in the Irish Constabulary and the Holbourne Police Force. I recently discovered this newspaper article and wonder if he may have been the Head Constable John Hanniver mentioned in the London Express on October 5, 1848, giving testimony regarding the Young Irelander Rebellion of 1848:

Head-constable John Hanniver sworn : I was temporarily stationed in Tipperary in the month of July last. I went to Widow M'Cormick’s house on the Monday following the shooting match. The shooting match was on Saturday. I examined the house inside and outside. I saw several marks on it outside of stones, and what appeared to be bullet marks. On  the inside partof the rear face there were also bullet marks.
-—— Cross-examined by Mr. Whiteside: I am a Dublin man. I have never been at a shooting match. I consider a shooting match to be where the peasanry and the military or constabulary come into collision and fire at each other. I suppose the pleasure of the game consists in the number shot at each side? No, sir, I don't think it's a pleasure to shoot a man.

John and Maria came out to Australia, and raised their 5 children: Marie, William, John, Sarah and Edward. By 1872 John's profession was described as "Labourer" . Then tragedy struck.

Maria intervened in a fight between two neighbour women, and was struck with a "length of stick, like the end of a clothes prop". Later she complained of feeling ill, lay down on the couch, and died. An inquest into her death found that the blow to the head had not caused her death.

The cause of death was extravasation of blood at the base of the brain. [The Coroner, Dr Youl] did not think the blow on the top of the head produced the rupture of the artery. Excitement would do it. The blow was quite recent. The jury found that the deceased died of extravasation of blood at the base of the brain.   

This article provides more details about the family and their living conditions which are quite gritty. The area is described as "wooden tenements", and says of Maria and John "The husband and wife had been in the habit of quarrelling, and were addicted to drink.". The closing paragraph of the article offers a grim insight into the night of Maria's death:

Last night the house in which the deceased had lived presented a wretched spectacle. In a dimly lighted close room was the father crying in a maudlin way, in company with the children who now and then broke into a loud moan, while a number of women of the class one sees in such back slums were wandering about the house groaning and talking in a maundering manner, looking at the body, shaking their heads, whispering, and seeming really to be enjoying the misery of the moment as something of an exciting nature. The deceased was about 42 years of age.

The follow up article, reporting on the inquest, also describes Maria Hanniver as "a drunkard" and says she was drunk when she interfered in "the row between the other two woman. One was drunk, and had been beating the other's house with a stick all the afternoon to keep the other's child awake." I guess daytime TV had yet to be invented.

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