Q & A
Our team of experts offers tips and inspiration EDITED BY CLAIRE VAUGHAN
KATHERINE COBB is a member of AGRA based in Somerset
CELIA HERITAGE is a member of AGRA as well as an author and speaker
MICHELLE HIGGS is a writer and author who specialises in social history and family history
DEBBIE KENNETT is the author of DNA and Social Networking
REBECCA PROBERT is professor of law at the University of Exeter
JAYNE SHRIMPTON is a professional dress historian and portrait specialist
is a military family history expert and author
Who was Georgina’s real father?
Q My 3x great grandmother, Georgina (Georgiana) Allen, was born in Saltley, Warwickshire, around 1829 according to censuses (1851–1901).
Several of my DNA matches lead me to believe that Joseph Allen and Maria Heritage are either my 4x or 5x great grandparents. The amount of DNA shared with my matches suggests that Georgina may have been the child of one of Joseph and Maria’s six daughters. However, Georgina named Joseph as her father on her marriage certificate in 1871. How do I track down a baptism record to confirm her parentage?
Ann Baldwin
A You don’t say whether you have identified the baptisms for Joseph and Maria’s other children, but the family may have been members of a nonconformist church. While most surviving nonconformist baptisms are online, many nonconformist registers do not survive, so you may never find the baptism for Georgina, which would have helped corroborate the evidence from the DNA and from Georgina’s marriage record.
You should profile the Allen and Heritage families, collecting all the documentation you can find for Joseph and Maria’s siblings, children and grandchildren. Studying the wider family often reveals references to your direct ancestors. If you suspect that Georgina may have been the daughter of a child of Joseph and Maria, concentrate on the lives of the couple’s children. Although located in Warwickshire, Saltley was in Worcestershire diocese, records they hold for Saltley. You may turn up a parish scrapbook, or deeds and leases relating to the families, or there may be surviving Poor Law or bastardy records. These types of records are unlikely to have been digitised so, if you can’t visit Warwick, you could get a researcher to go for you (see agra. org.uk/member browse), while s
