By Rosemary Bailey
This article was published in the December 2021 edition of Soul Search, the Journal of The Sole Society
If so, and you are willing, please contact your Research Co-ordinator to share it with the society. We are starting use DNA to help us with the Societies’ research. Research Co-ordinator’s email addresses are on the outside black cover.
DNA results will provide two sorts of information which the Society is interested in. Firstly Y-chromosome which a man inherits from his father, who inherits it from his father etc… This is useful only for men with one of our surnames. If you have the same Y-DNA as another person you will have a common male ancestor. Secondly autosomal DNA which both men and women carry and can be used to show if a person is related to another, and how close that relationship is depending on how much DNA is shared.
In my own research I haven’t used DNA to break through any ‘brick walls’ but making contact with a distant cousin did provide me with confirmed a family story and provided more information.
As a child I was told by my great aunt that my 2xgreat grandparents owned Blackheath market in the Black Country; my aunt remembered her grandmother holding the takings scooped up in her apron before counting them. I’d never been able to find any more about it so imagined either my great aunt or I had imagined the memory. However this distant cousin knew all about it, and also told me that one of the children had run off with the takings, been followed to Liverpool by the police but had boarded a ship for the USA before they could stop him. The cousin had found the record of Joseph Rollason travelling to America on the SS Campania in 1906 with his family. No evidence yet of the theft though.
So it’s well worth getting your DNA tested and seeing what new information you get, and if you are happy to do so, please share it with the Society.