DNA Testing and Genealogy

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        When Merrill and I started genealogy (in the 1990s) research was based on paper documents and if you were lucky, microfiche. I can remember Merrill driving across to a Latter Day Saints Library to look up microfiche of English census data, It was an important way of mapping families. However if you had (say) the 1841 census for Stoke Climsland village and wanted to see if the Mitchells were still there in 1851 you probably had to order in the relevant Fiche, which might take a month. So family trees were hard won and a source of some satisfaction.
    In the next thirty years the internet arrived and data migrated online, It is now where you look for just about everything. Lots of databases and services are available. An interesting new tool appeared in the early 2010s - DNA testing. Ancestry offered to take your DNA and map your family's origins. My brother had his tested over ten years ago, and it told us what we already believed: that just about all of our ancestors came from the UK. It even recognised the substantial Cornish ancestry. Ancestry have turnedtheir growing database of family trees and user DNA tests with some clever software to produce a powerful new tool. What it does is compare two peoples DNA and tells you how much common ancestry you have. So a score of 12% indicates that you have common great grandparents and 3% indicates common great great grandparents. There are also less direct relationships that could lead to common DNA.
        My interest was aroused in February 2023 when I received an email which said
    In an article published in the Australian Law Journal this year (contents page here: https://sites.thomsonreuters.com.au/journals/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2023/01/Westlaw-AU-%E2%80%93-ALJ-Vol-96-No-12-Contents.pdf ), Professor Katy Barnett of Melbourne Uni and her mother Lynne have suggested in passing that their ancestress, one of Thomas Rowley’s natural daughters acknowledged in his will might in fact be the daughter of Simeon Lord! This is said to be on the basis of DNA results (presumably theirs) indicating consanguinity with known descendants of Simeon Lord.
    Some background: Thomas Rowley was a prominient officer in the Rum Corps in early Sydney. Elizabeth Selwyn was a convict who he took as a common law wife. She had five children, acknowledged by Thomas in his will as his.
    Quoting Marjorie Barnard in "A History of Australia'':
    Simeon Lord. He arrived in the colony in August 1791 with nothing but a seven-year sentence. He was assigned to Captain Rowley and endeared himself to that gentleman by making money for him, and also, in a quiet way, for himself. When he was freed he owned two houses. It was a beginning. His manners were rough, his domestic morals far from strict, but he had drive and imagination."
     For more material see Thomas Rowley's webpage.

    Then in March 2025 I received an email from Bob Venn. His wife Lyn was believed to be a descendant of Thomas Rowley's fifth child Eliza. Bob had independantly found the Simeon Lord link

Many years later, we finally had Lyn do a DNA test with AncestryDNA.
The “ThruLines" facility of Ancestry had a number of matches with Elizabeth Selwyn, but absolutely zero for Thomas Rowley.
Why, why, why?
On Lyn’s “Group” facility, there were a number of matches that related to a single forbear - without a name.
I called this group, the mystery match.
One of the researchers of this mystery group gave me the answer by having in his tree Simeon Lord as a forbear!
I rearranged Lyn’s tree with Ancestry to have Simeon Lord as Eliza’s biological father.
The result was, quite a number of positive matches now appeared - Simeon as the biological father.

I now have a project to understand ThruLines. Bob pointed out in another email that this has other implications for privacy of the living. Eg adoptions. In fact we know of someone (not renated) who discovered a half sister through Ancestry. As Elizabeth Selwyn shows, you do not have to get your DNA tested for information about you to be available. The DNA tests link family trees. And the DNA and Family tree databases are steadily expanding.
A more detailed discussion of Elizabeth Selwyn.s case is found on her page.

A comment is also warranted on the Ancestry "Ancestral Regions" facility. This seems to give useful information and be accurate. It gave 28% Cornwall for one partent and 0% for the other, agreeing with the family tree as we have it. It gave 3% Irisih ancestors for one parent, again spot on. It gave 0% for the other parent, who also had an ancestor who was a convict James Cubit, transported from Ireland, At the time we suspected he might have been connected to the Cubits in Flegg Island Norfolk, but could find no evidence. This might be a pointer in that direction.

Les Rowley

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