Distance No Object - It’s a Family Matter! (A joint talk by wife & husband, Alison & Ken Tait)

right well it gives me great pleasure to introduce our next speakers and I say speakers as plural because we have Allison and candidate who will be talking about their successes with DNA and Allison is retired what semi retired nurse and Ken is retired civil servant and they're both very very active in the north are the Family History Society which are many of you know them already and they've been using DNA on the beginners point of view for a few years now but I think from some of the examples you'll hear from Ken and Alison it's abundantly clear that you don't have to know the technicalities and the ins and outs of DNA to actually derive maximum benefit so here's your talk to us about family matters distance no object please welcome Ken and Alison taste good morning everybody I hope you've managed to survive the horrible weather on the way in and the flooding in the routes and so on and so forth and then we did despite a fairly interesting journey in what we're here now this is we've been different from the previous talk and the previous talks some of which I found a bit mind-blowing I'm not very technically minded and have a great deal of difficulty and understanding a lot of that stuff but we have done DNA tests we wondered what to do with the results and this is led us to where we are and I write this also for anybody that doesn't know is our first time standing in front of an audience talking and using PowerPoint and all these things so I will be using my notes I'm afraid and sorry been scripted it's going to be a bit stilted but that's the first time we've done it it'll be better next year when you come and any for any subsequent occasions growing up just outside Belfast I was the first of my generation of children coming up into the family I was followed a few years later by a succession of Cosmos six cousins couple of second cousins three second cousins in fact and then my brother eventually six years later on my mom's side of the family they these were all on my mom's side of the family my dad was an only child and other cousins on one side I felt like a fairly comprehensive tree on the maternal side who I haven't concentrated on earth or lies just the doctor there works fairly well however and dad said there wasn't anybody else to do the speed work so that fell on me he was the only child of my grandparents Daniel and there's Daniel my grandfather and my grandmother and my good aunt who lived with us when I was a child she dies names about 10 as many families the story of the history of the family has taken pretty much for granted until some significant event happens like a death or a the part a illness of an elderly member of the family and then you start talking about it or retirement at which time you have time to do a bit of a bit of research but that time some people have gone you've maybe lost your source material your best source material because it's usually where that Michael starts these things off hasn't I certainly had no idea where the story would take me when I started digging I didn't know I had any overseas family no relatives I didn't think I had anybody on my dad's side however in 1980 but I received a letter right of the blue from a previously unknown cousin Fred did he was best known Terry open Canada we knew nothing about him nothing about his family or anybody else up until this point but sofa confirm cause an exchange of letters and series of letters led to discovery of an old family Bible in Canada with all the names recording all the names and dates of birth and death and marriages of quite a few members of the family the who we already knew York who dad had already known during the course of Fred's investigations he had come across contact details for dad somehow I still don't know headless to this day hi but this letter I died of the blue-eyed led to the following sequence of events briefly Daniel was born on 19 in 1877 mrs. Daniel up here look that's not nice Daniel there this is Christina and this is my father Daniel 1877 was the song of Daniel Stewart kid born in 1856 I don't have a slide for him I'm afraid and he was married to Margaret McCurry who also born in 1846 or thereabouts Daniel was one of 14 siblings I know you can't see the detail there but mrs. Daniel and the 14 siblings there and I'm doing here somewhere Daniel Stewart is here Margaret I'm mccurdy here comes back on further but we don't know too much about them yet or I don't anyway I haven't done that bit of work yet another descendent of Daniel Stewart's brother Robert as the ancestor of some of the people in this room I'm thinking particularly of Alan and Valerie you've come to join us from Emma Valley and I'm very pleased to see you know in the early nineteen hundreds about five of my grandfather Daniel's surviving siblings emigrated to North America no I'm gonna list them here Robert fully known as Robert James black burnt it I'm going to call him rj b for simplicity because it's a mouthful lose it was also known as Rosina Margaret it was also known as Meg gin who was known as Jenny Mary who was known as many like wait why the hand all these additional names I don't know but this is Daniel again with one of the sisters Jenny and that's the back of the photograph there was just a note it's just they just confirmed who they are for me because I didn't know you know 2017 we were invited by some of our Canadian cousins who were this stage we had learned the existence of two a family reunion every 10 years or so the Canadians have a family reunion and dozens if not more often get together from all over Canada and find a point of gathering this year it was to be more they all so 2007 Allison inner life Allison and I arrived in Montreal and we met up with upwards of a hundred of these people many of them had descended from Daniel Stewart it and Margaret I'm mccurry through Robert James Blackburn and that is Robert James Blackburn and Helena who was a second wife they don't know much about her yet mm-hmm few of my second cousins in Canada Tracy and Barb I've been doing a great deal of work on the Canadian tree they had got to know of us through the the visits with Fred and so on a few years previous they saw they included or treated and treated us and their stuff most of the research had been done in the traditional way through purely general Registrar's Office church records here immigration immigration records and we have best resources and the results of the research led to whenever we arrived at the reunion that had produced a number of posters and things like and like that and Alison and in and for us if you could help by showing showing us what is produced mrs. mess is a family tree they produced so it makes it real makes it tangible that goes on for quite away as you can see as you can imagine that's quite impressed us when we arrived because we didn't do anything about it it was presented to us as we arrived and delivering that's not the complete that's not the complete tree but it's an idea of what you get goodness knows where we are somewhere in there so you know having been spurred by all that in 2017 again one week they had used ancestry DNA resources because they haven't heard a family tree D and they quite frankly at that stage which is the company that that we have based most of our more recent research on through the north of Ireland family history project the ancestry DNA test as an autosomal test that's a simple test which basically looks at 50 percent of your mail and your female your mother and your father's DNA and that's accurate sifts a doctor back five generations back there are other tests you maybe heard anybody that was here in the previous talks little parrot there's a bunch of mitochondrial tests and there's the Y DNA test one essentially covers the maternal line one covers the paternal line if you look on the Family Tree DNA website you'll see a rough explanation of what they are and what they do and where they're valuable and why there would be valuable resulting from their office one more test and until then unknown cousin also living in Toronto Brian G made contact my Brian brand Mac T rather made contact he is the grandson of rules tit has one of Daniels siblings here at the back earlier on Brian knows were mentioning him on the top today unfortunately because he's in Toronto he can't be here he would have liked to have been here he is he has suspended his ancestral research for the time being he's working after an ill family member and we're thinking of them all here at the moment so we wouldn't have known about Brian if it hadn't been for the DNA resources and searches he's related to Rosina but Rosina had changed her name when she was married so we didn't we wouldn't have had a clue looking at traditional records to look for a Brian McKeon or anybody else the name doesn't exist in the family up until this point so DNA in other words helped us to find somebody that we didn't know and that's been continuous that's what that's why I'm standing here not because the traditional records looking good but the DNA has helped and its introduced other people and because we are right there and this published DNA data other people are seeing us and finding us and that's basically how we came together with the people in the mafada the turn autom information when we went over we took over a lot of photographs we had gathered up and find an thenen being left and box or some things and their live space and so on and so forth from my father and his predecessors we didn't know the most of the people where there were new notations on any of quite a few of the photographs some had names on them but that didn't mean anything to us but a lot of the Canadian folk identified people for us so that was very helpful and very useful it also led to publishing some of the photographs to other DNA matches like Brian confirmed people again anonymous people to us who he was able to identify a benefit of a DNA match as a result of all that I was able to go to the place in Toronto where lose had left in 1910 he had found me through my Brian had find me through my connection to our cousin barb he was one of the organizers of the reunion through their DNA match Brian actually shares 192 sentiments with me which is relatively close that makes him the prediction as I think 3rd to 4th or 3rd 2nd to 4th cousin Brian barb or barb shares 247 centimorgans with me much picks her and roughly the same category without DNA testing we wouldn't have had black mat Brian we wouldn't have find out anything about that branch at the tree until quite a lot later on probably he phoned us and we found him through the published information on the on the on the internet on a Family Tree DNA tree also he found us there was a girl called Fran Frances be living in Washington State she's the great niece of Margaret Alma curry but you've previously met on the earlier slide mrs. Parker Tom McCurry another son Joseph who moved to Glasgow he was one that one of the customers who stayed behind he instead of going to Canada moved over to Glasgow but obviously there was a bit of military service involved at some stage I'm Margaret Alma Curry's great grandchild as our Brian and as our barb Margaret Ann McCurry features heavily throughout the story and there he is oh she's not Oh nuts yes yes Daniel Stewart did married debarker Marga Dom McCurry my grandfather Daniel did my grandmother Christine Christina I put a guest post first world war and that is where I'm going to rest my tail just for a night and Alison's going to step on board I'll give a little bit of her experiences especially looking at my notes to try and keep me right and between the two of us we'll get up there I missed my cue so um can I have my yes so my the first part of my talk distance distant cousins and not so distant cousins and come over to the microphone so okay um I was lucky at to inherit a very comprehensive family tree which my father Jack had worked on with his cousin Fred Arnold in the nineteen eighties they researched at the public record office in Balmoral Avenue graveyards all over Belfast and kindly dying knocked on doors met with Church ministers examined church records and recorded stories from word of mouth I'm reading the script by the way Jack had meticulously noted every detail and simply left no stone unturned at that time by the time that I looked properly at his work he was gone but wisely and thankfully he had known that someday I would in my own time be interested and would carry on the work that he had started he had been able to trace his mother Kathleen McGowan her family back to the earlier to this to the mid 1600s actually in Donna caddy country Dean and his father John Scott's family John back to 1745 in Fife Scotland he had highlighted mysteries under Norma and details that he simply couldn't find and when I took up the baton in 2016 I was able to use online records in particular the Irish census of 1901 and 1911 and I solved a few mysteries very easily however in turn a few new mysteries came to light for me to investigate and this photograph is some of what I inherited in terms of boxes and newspapers and family trees photographs documents monstrous amounts of material so in short all this led me to take a DNA test in fact two separate autosomal tests with two different companies I was hoping that by putting my DNA right there I could contact I I could connect with half cousins of mine who were also descendants of my great-grandfather Alexander Smith McGann born Donna birdie kind of died in 1944 and his wife Mary Ann Arnold hold on I will explain when my father did his research in the 1980s he had discovered that his grandfather had been married twice the first time aged 18 he married in 1862 I further discovered was the help of my friends in the north of Ireland family history society but in fact my great-grandfather had been married three times sadly he had lost two young wives in quick succession due to complications following childbirth the children survived from his first marriage and a daughter born in it 1863 Maggie McGowan her proper name was Margaret Agnes she was known as Maggie and from his second marriage a son John Charles McGowan born in 1868 Alexander went on to marry a third time I wonder did his third wife know the full story I am his great-granddaughter from his marriage to his third wife Mary Ann Arnold I know from meeting family papers including certificates and wills that together they brought up children from the first two marriages together in 1882 his daughter Maggie was married from the family home to a blonde a street in Belfast where she lived with her father his third wife Mary Ann her half siblings John charns Alexander and Kathleen the children to the third marriage I was hoping to connect with the possible half cousins of mine from the previous marriages who would be descendants of Maggie and John Charles unfortunately to date I have not find any I think it is just the case that as of yet no matches have come forward to test and I remain hopeful I believe his son from his second marriage went to the to the USA and my great-grandfather had several siblings so going back a few more generations there is great potential for matches still to come forward and I'll have to make the connections so what are we glad knowing the Scott Arnold tree photograph this is a family tree that when you can't make head or tail of it from this distance of course but that's just an example so as I said I had inherited a the comprehensive family tree on my father's side the old photographs the documents the additional fabulous records and notes for signposting it seemed that for now it was a waiting game and reluctantly I decided to change tack on my mother's side I had no fabulous records extensive photo collections documents or written sign posts but I did have stories from my mom about her early life our brothers and sisters her parents her aunts and uncles the Cairns family lived in Belfast and they were had relations in sent field kynzie dine my mother's parents James Carrington Deborah Martin had moved to Belfast in 1915 in order to find out more I started with the 1901 and 1911 census and again friends in the north of Ireland Family History Society pointed me in the right direction with on other online resources I was off and in no time back to rural st. field in the decade before the outbreak of World War one I discovered that my grandfather had eight siblings that's the 1901 census I think of the 1911 census and Robert Alexander George James John Samuel Gris Isabella Aunt Minnie I had heard of all but one Alexander I didn't know that name I had never heard of him Alexander would have been my uncle of my mother's I had heard her talk with great affection about her aunts and uncles she named them Uncle Sam my uncle Robert and so on it's story of stories and entails but never an uncle Alexander or an uncle Alec I wondered why in my generation there were ten cousins and I knew them well we spent a lot of time together the name Alexander was repeated in our generation why I wondered had Alexander died I came across a word war one casualty report for Alexander Carey's have Alexander died as a result of injuries I then find a marriage for Alexander Cairns and Markham both raptly in Belfast was children born after World War one so perhaps the casualty theory didn't fit thought had happened to Alexander and his young family a few months ago I received an email from Alyce Caron's and Alice knows I'm giving this talk today saying that she had taken a family DNA a family find her DNA test and she and I had a close DNA match she had looked at my family tree and we were related on my maternal grandfather James Kara's side of the family I didn't know at first which of my grandfather's brothers she was descended from but I imagine you have guessed Alice's in fact Alexander's granddaughter Alice is my second cousin and we share 283 centimorgans this was a fantastic breakthrough and for the last few months we have been exchanging regular emails exchanging photographs and hearing about each other's families Alice explains that her grandfather Alexander Karin's his wife Margaret and their four children had left Ireland in 1925 emigrating to Canada and they later settled in Western Canada in Alberta Alice had met and married an Australian man and is now living in Queensland Australia clearly without DNA testing we would never have connected over the last 10 years Alice has extensively researched the caring's family in Quincy time however had not had direct contact with anyone in kynzie dime until she emailed me as a result of this match Alice has been able to share a photograph of our great-grandparents George Campbell Cairns and Margaret Hance Kelly slide 19 Alice has said recently Alice has said in an e-mail that she is so pleased to have connected at last with relatives living and kunti time and there's more it's a long shot this is the story so far the next part a few weeks ago a few weeks ago mark the first part was a few months ago this is the next part is a few weeks ago and before I finish I'd bring you up to date with a few days but a few weeks ago there's more this is a story so far a few weeks ago my husband Ken and I were off with my cousin Alistair Cairns and his wife Olga and Alistair and audibles know that I'm giving this talk this morning having a chat over a cup of coffee in a local cafe we were actually chatting about the breakthrough story that I have just recounted some acquaintances of Alistair and Olga came into the coffee shop b-team and as she would expect all the usual things happened introductions and light-hearted chapt as a friendly folk joined us briefly Alistair explained to them that we were all interested in our family history were presently talking about a cousin with had recently connected with in Queensland and thankfully also added that cam was secretary of the local branch of the family history society all together later Exhibit A later in the day ken received an email from allister's friend saying that his mother was a Cairns and he was researching her family he added it's a long shot but I thought I'd let you know in case it ties up with anything you know well you've guessed it did Ken replied explaining that I had recently been researching my mother's Karen's family and kunti dine and this is how we worked it out my new possible cousin BT had already done a Family Tree DNA autosomal test and when he checked he had a match with my cousin Alistair they matched each other third to fifth cousins next my new cousin Beatty emailed his second cousin JC in Toronto who had also tested and he discovered that we were all matched jacy's response was great news Allison and I are matched v to its cousins so more or less within the range of the autosomal DNA test slide 20 Jones links to Allison no no I realize that so our list is as follows well I can't really move on oh you're not hearing me so it's John Allison John's dad John of course everybody every generation the names of the same John's dad John Alison's mom Maureen John's grandfather John Allison's grandfather Jim's John's John's great-grand dad George Alice's great grandfather George not the same George Jones great-great grandfather John Allison's great-great grandfather Robert Jones great-great great-grandfather Archibald Allison's great-great grandfather another James Olmos trying to keep up with sorry you were all over the place so we reckon Archibald and James are brothers and that their father another James Cairns and if they is the common ancestor and they're looking in the traditional records of course the names change so we've got CAIR ns we've got ke e AR n es and then we have a new one k ER n o NS Kernan's Cairns it's just the way it's pronounced and whoever's writing it down as you all know the DNA matches have connected cousins and coins edina and far beyond and this is an encouraging addition to my maternal family history researchers the information has also enabled us to verify an inscription recorded on a headstone and sent Phil parish church the headstone was erected by analyzer Cairns in 1864 in memory of her son Thomas who died aged 28 no Eliza Ellen McElveen married Jim's Kernan's keer and awareness in March 15 20 in Jumeirah Presbyterian Church so that's another link that is as a result of the DNA test I can confirm and the story 100% back to 1809 a few days a new match a completely new match popped up and another probable second cousin I haven't had a lot of time to do very much with this match yet but what I have done is I have looked at the tree published night this is on a lance s trait and it shows a possible line back to a John Cairns lowland Scotland it 1638 there are several generations Alice has also alluded to a similar none of us have checked it yet it needs checked it could be right but so as I said today I can confirm everything back to James Kerry's born 1800 and I hope very soon to be able to substantiate this and verify the the information back to the to the early sixteen hundreds I think that's me concluded which leads to me miss Tenny which leads back to me you would my follow-up story on the tale continues when we came back from Toronto and 2017 we had we had attended an event that was being held by the north of Ireland Family History Society at that stage we were very new members very recent members into the society didn't know very many of the individuals involved in that didn't really know much about DNA or anything else but we were obviously very much more curious and more interested and finding out a little bit more so click onto that we have been swallowed up by the Family History Society and as you can see better but he shirts nor the rest of it we we do a lot of no to help and support the volunteer for the society because they have done so much for us and put us on the right track and so on and so forth so it's payback time we are getting them back now we thought whoever were in Canada we had decided to do an ancestry DNA autosomal test because all the rest of the family over there Dalek we didn't do over Family Tree DNA when we came back the the family tree the north of Ireland family history societies event here they were doing a DNA information day I think so we decided to do a test with them as well but the idea that the more exposure that we had out there the better the chances were of attracting matches and so on I also encouraged the Canadian cosmos to transfer their data into the Family Tree DNA north of Ireland project very very simple process in order to again increase the chances of people finding us from being find the single act has opened up an extensive network of contacts and information that I have been able to previously find the thought was meaningless has suddenly become relevant and we've been able to link and exchanged pictures link up with relatives that we didn't even know existed now in 2017 from my list of matches on Family Tree DNA I are from ancestry I sent an email to a lady called Patricia who had a two hundred and fiftieth centimorgan match with me put her in the second the fourth bracket the second the fourth cousins bracket and having looked at the tree that she had published on set on ancestry I could see familiar names and familiar personalities and the tree was identical but some of the dates and some of the information was very slightly at variance to what I had so that was why I emailed her just to see which one of us had made the mistake or what the mistake was or if we could identify the mistake often people adopt other people's trees because they look very similar but they're not necessarily a hundred percent right so this is what I wanted to do I wanted to adopt her tree because she'd done more work than I had but I just wanted to be sure there wasn't brilliant mistakes or addict her tree mistakes that I had made in this case her research was good better than mine so we stood we continued the exchange of information today and photographs and so on and so forth she was able to identify er surf herself and some of the old photographs that I had which had been annotated within the impact but we didn't know who was there were obviously American photographs are photographs from America that had been passed down to my grandparents presumably we'll see here torn pictures with this little person called Pat I mean I know that Pat there's the same person Patricia that he was delighted to see them because she haven't seen the photographs and I was delighted to be able to exchange them with her let her have them then in 2018 I received an enquiry from you heard me talked earlier on ago tried Francis Brava Francis who had linked with Brian well Francis emailed me she's based in Washington State she's a retired teacher had been born in Manitoba in Canada and I've been researching ancestry her ancestry for quite some time culminating in a great book which she just published in 2019 they're never to be heard from again searching for the McCurley family of marrow that's been a great piece of research for all of us I have benefited greatly from it I've contributed some to it as well some information that we have given Francis in the book so that was quite pleasing she had also made the connection with Brian and Toronto and had exchanged information with her with him and then again and 2018 and hopping backwards and forwards across a couple of years here I know but it's just the way things came up in my notes I had an email from another girl called Hannah he lives in Staffordshire Hannah Edwards she had phoned me and her DNA matches an ancestry DNA again quite distant this time only 50 cent of Morgans estimated to be between fourth and sixth costumes are there abouts and she had phoned that her great-grandmother was Ellen tit another one of the 14 siblings sometimes referred to as Helen born in 1881 in liver fat a she was a sister actually of Robert John Blackburn Robert James Blackburn teeth yes one of the 14 we wouldn't have known to look for Hannah because we didn't know the name Edwards in that stage so the DNA brought Hannah and I together that's as far as my DNA my change story goes at the our experiences have been very very satisfying and exciting we've made connections with many people that were previously would never have come into contact with listen courage just to look further and continue to create the history of the family for those of us who follow looking around this room will I know of two definite connections already but looking a red nursery might be fairly confident but somebody else sitting here will have a DNA match with me that's close enough for us to explore and if we thought is the kiss until we meet hi cousin there someone you're there somewhere find me and we'll talk some a few observations we enough these observations actually and Allison's going to join me just to tell them as we as we go through the next 15 or 20 pages of notes here you might have started out on your family history research using DNA would have it up by curiosity to know where you've come from and where you who went before you your success depends a great deal on there might have work you do in the mind of effort they could enter and for putting information into your DNA profile on the tree whenever you look at the tree it's very frustrating to look matches to see that they haven't put in their ancestral surnames or the haven't put in their locations were they all engineered from or where they think they always knit from and information like that or even if they've just used a nickname or their initials you don't know whether it's a significant person somebody worth following up to and that has happened to my case a couple of times where there's been just initials and a fairly high fairly close match but is it worth following that person up you don't know who they are you don't know anything about them they haven't put a tree on you can't see anything to compare with if you've imported your DNA data from another place like into the Family Tree DNA database from ancestry or and any other companies always make sure that you also put during the profile details and the same information you're an engineer ancestral surnames and so on and so forth because again when it's transferred across all you get as your name you don't get that background information really and that's frustrating ladies meeting names remember to put your maiden name on we made the mistake early on of I wasn't married anymore we have to change it well that's why I certifying I'm Allison because when I'm trying to make a connection it's Scott that I need to connect it's also important if somebody emails you some unknown person was find you in their matches in the emails you take the time to reply to them even if it's you'll need to say no I can't help you I don't have any more information rather than just ignore the emails it's very disheartening whenever you're doing that bit of research and your figure you're keen you think you'll find somebody that you might connect to and you don't get a response for a while and persevere if it doesn't have a look first maybe they're not look another stuff maybe they're doing another that's of having another part of their life at that time they'll come back to it and sex or nine months time by the reg time that email is away way radio in their inbox and the world see it so send an odd reminder just don't be a nuisance put send an odd reminder and be courteous no but come on the scale will soon better pick up no skeletons we all have skeletons in our cupboards or we might howl herself skeletons and her cupboards remember at this level at this generation we're not responsible for what our ancestors did got up to goodness before a sky like rascal issues went on if there is a surprise or two it's just something that happened in the past before you were about so you're not responsible you don't need to do that just running your finger along the night just frightened of me going off sketchy means you can't be blamed for what your woman on the head of you it has to the fascination of your family history your generation will have moved on and that part of the story is in the past and that's what it's all about its ancestry it's the past it's our genealogy that's there it's part of us whether we like it or not it's there so you made it oh I'll just accept it and live with it now a big brother some people are a bit anxious about getting involved with the DNA because the tape of the Big Brother thing somebody's looking over your shoe yes at the taxman if you've got a bank card a loyalty card a mobile phone any of those things they knew more about you know the DNA testing company does and nobody's interested in your DNA for genealogy or anything else that the healthcare people they have a different way of doing things and it's for the benefit of other people in the long term so don't worry about it something that's pretty well anonymized anyway but have no use to anybody else it's no use to anybody that's trying to clone your credit card or anything like that so that's what happens so Lex said DNA has greatly enriched and they ignited your family history journeys our family history journeys away beyond our wildest dreams and it's continuing to do so and the more we're exposed to all these highfalutin technical talks and all the rest of the more knowledge were absorbing slowly and thank goodness for people like Morris here for pointing us in the right direction keeping us in the right direction and doing all the great work that they have been doing because you as we all know you can only go so far with the paper records that we have and the DNA has opened up all sorts of possibilities and registers to all sorts of people who would never have known about so thanks for your perseverance and thanks for listening tests thoughts that have occurred to me you know the way when you were at school and you were doing your maths homework and you've checked your long division or you checked it by the the long and complicated route well to me whenever you have got your traditional and research then you've got your DNA coming in as a sort of a framework to double-check your mouse homework it just confirms everything and very often and for instance if nobody had any research done if they were to take a DNA test it gets the ball rolling sometimes there are family members out there who are looking for you so although you may not actually have started and done any traditional research it's a point at which you can come in to the process and get a DNA test done there's no right time there's no wrong time just take the test test the water and even as I said even if you know you have no family history already prepared the text will be an excellent starting or the test will be an excellent starting off point and it's sort of it provides a window on the past of our ancestors lives and very often their actual relationships because sometimes what has food on paper and is not exactly the way things worked out so it doesn't tell the foods to always expect the unexpected and that I am a shopping list so thank you very much everybody beautiful demonstration of how connecting with cousins can actually help you put names on photographs exactly yes I come out with stories of what actually happens to people are missing from the family tree and whose absence or lack of additional information this was kind of nagging at you all the time somebody out there the key word I think is collaboration if we all collaborate you know all the people in your mattress list if we collaborate you get a lot further both of you get a lot further you both benefit absolutely I think the first relevant questions from anybody here is why am I here that's the question we all ask ourselves why are we here I think certainly doing your family tree helps you find your roots and gives you a much greater sense of rootedness yeah as well and to see what your ancestors have lived through and to put yourself in their shoes I think is also very fascinating because you you kind of wonder if I had to live through that same experience how would I first and go back to the story of like my great-grandfather who was married three times first time he was married and he his wife died when she was 18 and he was it so you know how do you cope with that when you're 18 mm so he married again and the second wife died when he was 25 when he married the second time but he married again was third time you know expectation life was different in those days but I think to lose a wife at a guillotine to be married at age 18 and to have to deal with the sadness around that would have been very different difficult in those in those times and that was a common that was a common occurrence that wasn't just something that would have happened occasionally it sadly would have happened a lot death was a very very prominent part of life absolutely and as meet them no but it know you raise a very good point because of course child mortality of course was also very very so our ancestors had to live through the bereavement of losing children some people would lose half their children some people do lose a quarter of their children so they actually have 14 the siblings it's actually quite remarkable well they didn't know survived two or three of them that died and China hated one was killed as a football accident when he was about 21 mm-hmm I think was the first three post fatality and oh really that's another story for the next year's oh yeah oh yeah you know I just want to ask you about this chart here that you have at the front is this did this come from Canada yes I've never asked it because a seed of it's all transit I on the one bomb sheet and I was just wondering how that was done because any printer that I have just one site and they were in yeah yes my cousin Chris in Toronto took it to a professional printing right company okay there was some of their products but some of the genealogy companies that there's a players who supply like blank family tree formats and so on and so forth offer a printing service similar to this there's one called my history I think in the UK and I think they offer a similar product or they offer a tree printing service anyway whether they can do that particular table product I don't know but I imagine something similar yeah okay the other the other thing I want to just say is that as a member of the family history society I have seen the work that you put and the way you promote it in the society and we just wait to find yourself and Nelson for that thank you very much and that's a perfect note to end the presentation and we'll be back in five minutes so with any chemist or the person limitations of DNA but for now Allison and Ken thank you very very much [Applause]