Many of our family members have taken an AncestryDNA test in the last few years and these have provided some interesting discoveries. In particular, several members have taken tests specifically to help with our three priorities right now:
- to confirm that John Knight was a child of Emanuel and not one of Emanuel's brothers,
- to find out the ancestry of Tom Winder, and
- to find the ancestry of Ellen Johnson.
We're currently scrutinising recent Ancestry results from one of Hungerford men and mtDNA from one of the very few remaining women descended matrilineally from Ellen Johnson. One of three close matches is a woman descended from a convict sent to Tasmania which is interesting.
One of the problems we have with the early Hungerfords is that there were numerous intermarriages between Hungerfords, Bechers and Daunts in the generations before Emanuel and his nephew Becher migrated to Australia.
We need more older generation members to take a test so we get a better sample set. If you have a parent or aunt or uncle who hasn't done an AncestryDNA test, perhaps you could persuade them how helpful this is and a fascinating view into the ancestors that we read about in our Hungerford Irish History.
We can also increase the number of matches by uploading your Ancestry test to several sites which will allow you to upload your DNA for nothing. For a small fee, you can turn on their fancy features for analysis and reporting, but this is not necessary for us.
More importantly, we will have to compare the tests we have with a chromosome browser.
How can you help?
- Download your Ancestry DNA file, using the DNA settings screen
- Upload the file to MyHeritage
- Upload the file to FamilyTreeDNA
- Upload the file to GEDCOM.
- Link a family tree in each site (even a couple of generations helps). This helps the database to highlight how your DNA matches are related to you.
- Send an invitation to Davina Hall Best and Peter Sherlock inviting us to have guest or collaboration access for the purpose of HAFS DNA projects.
- Send us an email from the HAFS website contact page to get our email address and to let us know what display name you used in each place.
Thank you everyone for your co-operation.
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