The Hampshire Family Historian | Vol.49 No.3 | December 2022

Local Group Programmes

Contact: Kay Lovell Email: romsey@hgs-online.org.uk Tel: 01794 515316

Romsey Meetings normally take place on the first Monday of the month (except Bank Holidays) at Crosfield Hall, Romsey, at 7.30 p.m. Newcomers are welcome. All meetings for the foreseeable future will by Zoom.

Reports by Ros Boon and Colin Dawe: (September) Mixing DNA Results with a Paper Trail – Dr Penny Walters. Penny is an informative, practised and very amusing speaker. Penny used herself, an adopted person, together with her six mixed-race children (including a set of twins), as perfect examples of how everyone’s DNA is a random mixture of about the five preceding generations. She talked of the strengths and weaknesses of the five most popular testing sites and spoke of using ethnicity and triangulated results to confirm or disprove consanguinity. She also advised using known relations – someone about whom you are 100% confident of their place in your tree - as ‘anchors’ from whom you can then take further triangulated results to advance your research. Penny suggested we should all upload our results to GEDmatch as this is where all the ‘nerdy’ (her word) researchers congregate– as they are the people who are much more likely to answer emails and offer helpful, relevant and exciting information. Ros Boon (October) Breaking a Brick Wall with DNA – Paul Tanner-Tremaine. Poor Kay was suffering from Covid this week, and was unable to be with us, but our own Paul Tanner-Tremaine stepped into the breach and told us the tale of how he has been on a quest to break down the mystery surrounding the man who is the origin of his surname. It all hinges on his grandfather who was known under any and all of the names Arthur, Guy, AG, Tremaine and Tanner-Tremaine. Paul told us that Arthur ‘told porkies all the time’ and even his year of birth is open to question but, by judicious use of DNA matches, Paul has managed to confirm separate links to both of Arthur’s parents. There is more to do, however, not least of which is to find Arthur’s birth or baptism record. This led us on to discussions about where the likelihood of correct matches at Ancestry - versus the amount of centimorgans - ceases to be dependable, and we also questioned the reliability of Ancestry’s ethnicity estimates given the uneven global (and even regional) input to their algorithm from members. It was a thought-inducing evening with much discussion. Colin Dawe Forthcoming Meetings:

December 5th The Dark Side of Christmas

Kay Lovell

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