Genealogy Chat

"All the nice girls love a Sailor". I think people generally don't appreciate that maritime trade made up the majority of inter-racial contact from the earliest times i.e. the Phoenicians some 4000 years ago are known to have traded for Tin in Cornwall. There is some evidence that the Greeks crossed the Atlantic. Most of History emphasises the warring events, forgetting that long periods of peaceful intercourse (hem hem) took place in between times. ;-)

This thread is very interesting, but to answer the OP, this is a post I made in April, on another thread on the same subject.

I have just been to a talk in our local village hall about DNA, given by Alastair Moffat, one of the team who does DNA testing for WDYTYA. It was very interesting and, depending what you want out of it, possibly worth the cost - £170.

He made the point that most of it is American based because, if you can prove that you aren't carrying any hereditary diseases, you can get a substantial discount on your health insurance premiums!!

The link below is for people with Scottish ancestry, but there is a similar website for Ireland and also one for Yorkshire, so I don't think it actually matters where you live or where your ancestors came from.

It is all interesting, but to see what you get for your money, click on DEMO.

http://www.scotlandsdna.com/

My uncles were darkish skinned, it was rumoured that their father was descended from one of the Spanish sailors who were shipwrecked off Kerry during the Spanish Armada

"The Spanish Armada in Ireland refers to the landfall made upon the coast of Ireland in September 1588 of a large portion of the 130-strong fleet sent by Philip II to invade England.
Following its defeat at the naval battle of Gravelines, the Armada had attempted to return home through the North Atlantic, when it was driven from its course by violent storms and toward the west coast of Ireland. The prospect of a Spanish landing alarmed the Dublin government of Queen Elizabeth I, and harsh measures were prescribed for both the Spanish invaders and any Irish who might assist them.
Up to 24 ships of the Armada were wrecked on a rocky coastline spanning 500 km, from Antrim in the north to Kerry in the south, and the threat to Crown authority was readily defeated. Many of the survivors of the multiple wrecks were put to death, and the remainder fled across the sea to Scotland. It is estimated that 5,000 members of the fleet perished in Ireland."

DET


a tale that could certainly be true!!

A friend has the married surname of Sabiston. Her husband's ancestors were Scottish. Family legend has it that they are decended from a Spanish sailor ship-wrecked when the Amada rounded Scotland. Who knows for certain? :-D

I prefer my 6 x gt grandfather arriving by being left behind by the alien space ship :-D


My father would have loved that


He loved a good story, especially one that would upset his sisters :-)

Have now decided my paternal side stems from Spain have got them back to early 1600s in Cornwall with a foreign sounding name....so they must have come over in the late 1500s with the Armada and settled here

That sounds like a good story will have to tell my parents :-D

Thought we weren't allowed two people with the same Board Name??


ah no!


it's CupCake, and t'other one is cupcakes



still confusion!



edited once for clarity

Hi A/C


The Armada was disrupted by major storms, and ships were blown all the way up the east coast to the tip of Scotland, and then round there to the Atlantic adn the Irish Sea, with ships being wrecked all the way


................. so, yes, tales of Spanish mariners will be found all round the coastline.



Personally, my background in science tells me that this mitochondrial testing is a waste of time and money .................... information obtained vs money spent will be minimal.

The 'Romans' were from all over the Roman Empire, which stretched from Africa to Eastern Europe.

And we were trading with other countries long before the Romans.

The UK has had a constant influx of people from Europe for thousands of years. It is hard to imagine, therefore, how a DNA test would help determine exactly who your ancestors were.

The very same info came to mind as well Silvia & included the coastlines of Wales & Ireland re ship wrecked Spanish mariners.
My parents had friends from Ireland, that had migrated after WW2.
Thinking back, the fellow was quite swarthy looking, dark brown eyes & the shape of his nose intrigued me....There's some good info on Wiki with regards to those times of the Armada.

don't forget that Spanish blood lines entered the UK after the Armada dring Elizabeth I time .........................


an unknown number of sailors from sinking Hispanic ships are beleived to have managed to reach shore, all around the UK .......... and are believed to have had children with local girls.


This is often forgotten as a means of getting new blood, or genes, into the UK ancestors.

Well I'm having a go just for the fun of it. As woman it can only be mitochondrial dna - but regardless it's so interesting

My father looked like a stranger, stood between his two siblings. A neighbour teasingly called him 'Rasta' and that was in the 1920's! In our case we are fairly confident there is a foreign link - finding it is a problem!

Perhaps you should have a DNA test DC ;-) :-)

My father was very dark skinned with black hair. In fact when I showed a friend a photo of him at school (many many years ago) before I pointed him out they asked who the Indian bloke was, and that was my dad.

No foreigners found in the family to date. Just Liverpool & London (so maybe as passing sailor nipped in somewhere!)

I have dark hair, eyes and olive skin...but not found one ancestor born outside of England all direct lines go back to at least 1800

So not sure how that would work

Hi all, thanks for the replies. To clarify, this is a search simply to try to find out where a (possible) Hispanic ancestry came into the family from. Still cropping up - generations later - are dark (brown to olive) skin, dark haired, dark eyed genes.

It appears to have been known within the family (certainly by my Grandmother) that one of her 'Grandfathers, served his time before the mast and brought back with him a Hispanic Wife'.

We believe we know which of her lines this is and I can get an all-male-line specimin, (from a great nephew of my Grandmother); we have no idea where this Hispanic line came in, ie how many generations back and, unfortunately, this Miller line draws a blank after my x3 Gt Grandfather (As do all female lines coming into the family later than him).

I am fully aware that any result I received would be extremely generalised, but it is more a matter of interest, simply trying to rule out other areas, which I hope it might do if there is strong South American/Hispanic/Indies genetics showing in any way. (and I mean going back past this early female ancestor).

This is purely, an 'interest factor', being that we can get no further - at the moment - with this line - to have a possible, potential, geographical area would be of interest.

Looking good at the moment is the National Geographic Genome study.

Cheers

Rae

Most of the DNA tests are for the male line or female line. The markers in the DNA can indicate the route that line took out of Africa.

As DC says the subject is still in its infancy and is being continually refined as more markers are idemtified and more data is accumulated.

As the markers identified at present are from at best hundreds of years ago, it will not help in developing your family tree.

Over a period of a thousand years your number of ancestors will increase by roughly ten billion (not allowing for inter-marriage) so the relevance of the most recent marker in your DNA, to your genetic make-up in infinitessimally small.

DNA results have however tended to dispprove DC's description of Celt, Saxon and Viking influence. It is thought that each of those immigrations had about a 5% affect on the indigenous population. The original inhabitants coming over when there was a land bridge between Europe and the continent.