Making a Descendants Facebook Group

Depending on how immersed you are in family history research, a descendants group on Facebook might be something you could create if you yourself have already researched the family in depth or, if a group already exists, something that could help you immensely if you’re just starting out in your genealogy journey.

Usually, the main point of creating one is to gather all your family contacts in the one place to easily share research and photos, discover new contacts and uncover previously unknown information about the family.

Facebook is also a great tool for tracking down distant family members who may have previously unknown info or photos and having a group makes it easier for that new family member to quickly legitimise your request and hopefully create enough intrigue for them to go research and unearth their own info on their family line.

Trove’s Newest Digital Newspaper Additions

Yesterday I decided to check out the latest newspapers that have been added to the Trove website – one of my favourite site’s for researching Australian Family History, to find a massive 54 newspapers have been added, mostly for New South Wales and Victoria but the sole newspaper added for Western Australia is one that I’ve always hoped to search through.

The Herald, which is a still a current day newspaper for Fremantle, is now available on Trove, thanks to the City of Fremantle Library, with editions from 1867-1886 currently available.

After a quick search I found a great article about a Great-Grand Uncle, Luke Tonkin, who allegedly had been involved in an assault on another man.

I was hoping to find something on my GGGreat Grandfather, John Foss Tonkin, but couldn’t find anything substantial, I’m hoping later editions will turn up something for him.

But for now I get to know Uncle Luke a little bit better…

Just How Much of Me is Scottish/English etc?

It’s one thing to wonder where you got your nose or eyes from and it’s pretty amazing seeing them in 100 year old photos of ancestors, but have you ever wondered where all these body parts originated?
Is my dark hair from the Italian side or is it Black Scotch?
I’ve always wondered where my dark hair and light olive skin came from. At first I thought it was the Italian in me, but my mother has the same colouring’s and from what we knew there was no Mediterranean blood on her side.

With the recent discoveries I can confirm this and have come to the conclusion that it must be Black Scotch, but it made me wonder just how much of me is English, Scottish, Italian etc, so I applied a little bit of maths to figure this out in percentages.

Of course with DNA testing, you can only figure out the exact percentage of DNA inherited by testing each generation, but you can still make a good go of it.
You could also take the sex chromosome route which means males are 50% whatever their direct paternal line is and 50% whatever the direct maternal line is. For females, who only inherit their chromosomes from their mothers, you would be 100% whatever your direct maternal line is. So in that case I’m 100% Polish but my brother is 50% Polish and 50% English (Cornish).

G’day from WA…

This being my first post, I guess I should say a little about my tree and background.

There are two lines that I obsess over the most, my paternal (surname) line and my paternal grandmothers fathers line, probably because it has Italian roots and my dark features are a little unexplained, plus I like having something a little different to the usual Anglo roots. The other lines I’ve researched, but probably with not as much passion as these two.

Although in the past few years I’ve focussed a bit more on my maternal grandfathers line but it’s something I deem a little bit different as it delves in DNA genealogy, but I’ll write more about him later…it’s very interesting and a massive learning curve!
All up I’m English, Scottish, Polish, Austro-Italian, Kiwi, Irish and a little bit of unknown…if I were a dog, you could certainly say I am a mutt.