Z - Zaida Emily Rielly

Zaida had a short life, just seven years. She was the second child and eldest daughter of George Skivington Rielly and Emily Una nee Woodman. She was born in 1922. Her family lived in Moturoa, New Plymouth.

Her father was married twice. First to Zaida’s aunt, her mother’s sister who had died about two years after their marriage with no children. He then married Emily about nine months later in 1919 and they welcomed four children over the next seven years. He was a plasterer by trade for most of his life, but in 1928, the year in which he died, he was recorded on the electoral roll as a Watersider.

What a sad time that must have been for Zaida’s mother, to lose her husband and then Zaida within six months of each other. Three months after Zaida's death, Emily’s father also died. In 1930 with three children under ten, Zaida’s mother remarried.

Zaida and her siblings were fourth cousins of my father. Their great great grandmother (who lived to be almost one hundred and two) was a sister of my great great great grandfather. Their great grandmother had come to New Zealand with her uncle and his family in 1841and she had made a life and married twice, and lived in the New Plymouth, Whanganui, Manawatu and Wellington districts.

Is Zaida in your tree? I have met some who have her in their tree thanks to DNA. Without DNA I don’t know if I would have ever worked out how Jane got to be in New Zealand. Maybe you are another cousin I am yet to meet?

Y - Y Chromosome

Why?

This is the one we don’t all have. You only have a Y chromosome if you are male.

It doesn’t mutate very often and is passed father to son. There are markers which can determine where your family originated and show their path out of Africa. I don’t get all the science of it yet though.

Additionally, because it is passed father to son it can be a source of proving family lines. Which Smith line is the right Smith line? Are we really Joneses or could we be Prices?

A few years ago, I paid for tests for my Dad and my Mum’s cousin.

Mum’s cousin because we have a brick wall in that branch and I hoped we might find some other people. I remember being hopeful when the results came in because there was one match with the “right” surname. But there are no matches close enough to determine anything yet.

For Dad it was more to see if there were any other people testing and try to confirm the family name. The results were pretty much not results at all, so far back it was pretty much prehistoric! To be fair many lines in the family have daughtered out – but not all.

For both, I just need more people to test.

I went through the family tree and looked at DNA matches and have made a list for Dad’s paternal line of people who fit the criteria. But I don’t know 90% of them, and it isn’t cheap. Plus, we’ve all been there contacting DNA matches trying to make a connection and not getting replies for months, years or ever.

For Mum’s brick wall though I have nobody. Well, I have my male cousins, and Mum’s cousin has sons and grandsons, but they are most likely to just match and not provide a window into the past. These candidates are the only male descendants of Mr Brick Wall great great grandfather. There aren’t even a lot of autosomal matches hinting at connection in this branch. So where to go?

So, just in case you are a DAVYS who is the SON of a DAVYS and you might be interested in testing maybe we can make a deal?

Or if you are a FULLER (with roots in London/Kent/Essex) who is the SON of a FULLER it seems so much harder but maybe it is still a possibility.

Contact me male cousins, second cousins, second cousins once removed, third cousins, fourth cousins even any of you fifth cousins in England.

X - X Chromosome

X. We all have an X chromosome. Some of us even have two. How we get it, where we get it from and how it comes to us is similar but different.

Females have two X chromosomes, they receive one from each parent. When a mother gives her X chromosome to a child it is a recombination of the two X chromosomes she received from HER parents.

A male can only have one X chromosome, the one he receives from his mother. His father can only give him a Y chromosome.

A father can only give his X chromosome to a daughter, and because he has only one there is no recombination. The X chromosome he passes to his daughters is an exact copy of the recombined X chromosome which he received from his mother. If he only has sons, it can’t be passed on at all and the inheritance stops.

We still get other autosomal DNA though from our female ancestors – just not always the X.

This chart shows where my X DNA comes from. Coloured to see where it is passed on and where it is not. Pink inherited from mothers and blue inherited from fathers. There is no colour where no X can be inherited because the child in the next generation was male.

It also shows as a percentage how that is combined each generation. For example for me, each parent contributing 50% to make a total of 100% X DNA in 2 chromosomes. The 50% from my mother is made up from the recombination of her two chromosomes from her parents, nominally 25% each. The 50% from my father is that same 50% he received from his mother.

How crazy is it to see that for my paternal grandmother, the X chromosome from her father (which makes up half of the X I inherited from my father) came direct from his mother and in turn half of that again came from his mother’s grandmother! That means I have nominally 12.5% X DNA from one of my 4 x great grandmothers. I don’t even know her name.

W - William Reuben George Betts

William was born in Chelsea, London on 27 December 1841. His birth is registered as Reuben George, but by the time he was baptised at St Luke, Chelsea in January 1842 his name had become William Reuben. On the 1851 census he was recorded as Reuben. He was the second child and only son of Thomas Betts and Anne nee Horskins. He was a first cousin of my great great grandmother.

William’s father was recorded as a Distiller when he married Ann and a Brewer’s Labourer on the 1851 census. On subsequent censuses he is recorded as a Labourer. William was usually recorded as a Labourer too, but on Christmas Eve 1865 when he married Elizabeth Rice in Wandsworth, he gave his occupation as Engine Driver. At the baptism for his eldest son, he is recorded as a Stoker.

In July 1874, with his wife and three eldest children, William emigrated to New Zealand. His cousin, my great great grandmother had been living in Christchurch since 1860. Did they come because they knew she was already settled there? Or was there other family already here as well? They had five more children once in Christchurch, although only two survived into adulthood.

Christchurch was still a small town in the 1870s, they surely knew each other although I have never heard talk of this family before myself. They lived and worked in the same growing suburbs as well.

In 1900 the family were living in Southampton Street, Sydenham. Their three eldest children Elizabeth, James and Walter were already married. James was employed as a compositor; Walter was a bootmaker and very shortly would have a shoe store on the corner of Colombo and Byron Streets. There appears to be another Betts family living in Sydenham. James marries a daughter from this family but perhaps they are connected some other way too? Potentially cousins of William.

In another potential twist or hypothetical coincidence. Two of my grandfather’s cousins ran a printing and stationery business in Christchurch. Where did they learn this trade? Could it be that they worked for their Betts cousins who were compositors and in the print trade?

A DNA match revealed this surprise connection. Until then we had absolutely no idea anyone else in this family had emigrated. Let alone to the same flourishing city or that William and his wife were buried just a row apart from my great great grandparents.

Do you know this family? Maybe we can collaborate.

V - Viola Grace Cooper

Viola was born in Waikiwi, Southland, New Zealand in 1880. She was the ninth child of ten. Her parents were married in Hobart, Tasmania in 1864 where her mother had been born and raised, the daughter of two convicts. Her father had been born in England and emigrated to Wellington, New Zealand as a child with his parents and siblings. He spent some time on the Victorian goldfields and returned to New Zealand and set up a nursery business in Invercargill and Waikiwi.

Viola married James McKay in 1902 and they had four children. In the 1905 and 1908 electoral rolls James is an engineer and they are living in Kelso in the Clutha or Wakatipu electorate. In 1911 they are still in the Wakatipu electorate but are living at Waikaka. In 1914 though they were living at Mabel School in the Mataura electorate and James was a farmer. James died in 1918. Their children at this time were aged between four and fourteen.

In the 1919 electoral roll although James no longer appears, Viola’s entry still shows her as married and living at Mabel School. In 1922 Viola appears on the electoral roll in Timaru living at 106 Church Street. In 1923 she is listed in the Wises Street Directory as a Dressmaker living at the same address, on the left-hand side between Gibson Street and Le Cren Street. James had died in Invercargill so at some time afterward she must have moved her family north.

Viola remarried in 1924 to William John Spence a well-known horse trainer in Timaru. On the 1925 electoral roll they are living at 137 Evans Street, where they remained. William was killed after suffering a seizure his horse bolted, and he was thrown from the gig in 1941. Viola died in 1959.

One of Viola’s older sisters named one of her own children Viola Grace as well, perhaps after her favourite sister. Do you know this family? Viola’s father was a younger brother of my great great grandfather. He appears to have an additional name which I haven’t been able to verify and so was initially sceptical of the link. However, DNA and the information recorded on various certificates has convinced me. Plus, there seem to be a lot of green fingered nurserymen in this branch. If this all rings bells for you please contact me and we can share what we know.

U - Unknown

I have an overwhelming number of people in my tree called Unknown. I knew they were there, but doing this A-Z challenge searching for people to write about has dramatically brought the situation to the forefront.

Unknown spouses, unknown surnames, specifically unknown maiden names of spouses, unknown children. Some are unknown because the records don’t exist or in the case of many women, they are never given an identity – just considered a chattel of their husbands.

Others are forced to be unknown because although there are records, we are paralysed in our research by the 100-year rule and unable to confirm names and events.

I need to do something about this to make my tree as complete as I can. So, my challenge for the next wee while will be to pick away at the list and see if I can give some of them an identity.

If you are looking for me, that’s where I will be, standardising place name formats and reducing the number of unknown people in the tree.

T - Tabitha Turtle

Tabitha was born on 29 June 1831 in St Marylebone, Westminster. On her baptism record on 7 August that year at All Souls her father is recorded as a Servant and Chandler and the family were living at 22 Harley Mews. Tabitha was the eldest known child of Thomas Turtle/Turtell/Tuttle and his wife Ann nee Boddington. Her parents were both from Oxfordshire and had married at Christ Church, Southwark, Surrey on 7 August 1828.

DNA matches link Tabitha to my family through the Boddingtons with her mother likely to have been a sister of my great great great grandmother Hannah.

By the time of the 1841 census Tabitha has 4 younger siblings, there was a fifth who had died aged about fourteen months. At this time the family seems to be one of six families living in one building in Upper York Street, perhaps a tenement. Thomas is only recorded as a male servant.

In 1851 Tabitha is employed as a Parlour Maid to the Vicar in Peasmarsh Sussex. Her father and brother were still in St Marylebone, lodging with a husband and wife in Little George Street where the head of the house was a Coachman and Thomas was recorded as a Cab Driver. Her sister Maria is a scholar at the Parochial School in New Road Sy Marylebone, and Rebecca the youngest sibling is living with an aunt and uncle in Standlake Oxfordshire. I have been unable to find either her mother or her sister Ann in 1851. Perhaps they had died and this is why the family were spread across four different households at the time of the census.

In 1856 Tabitha and her sister Maria emigrated to South Australia arriving at Port Adelaide on the Fitzjames on New Years Eve 1856. Two years later she married John Hooker. They had one child before he died in Kapunda in 1860 aged thirty-nine. Very soon after his death Tabitha remarried to Thomas Cook.

Two years later, Tabitha’s youngest sister joined them in South Australia, sailing on the Sir John Lawrence, the first ship to arrive under a new Emigration Scheme.

But what happened next? There is a death in New Zealand for a Tabitha Jane Cook under suspicious circumstances in 1875, but the age doesn’t quite fit to be this Tabitha. But then information on death certificates is notorious for being error filled.

Do you know the Turtle/Turtell/Tuttle family? Can you help me?