The known surnames of persons in this group to 5th cousin level are; Davis, Barns (Barnes), Gatrell, Rogers & Strotten. Another family who have matches but no settled links is Vey.There are a number of gaps in our knowledge of ancestors at this level. The link to the descendant charts related to these matches are Davis, Rogers & for the currently unconnected Vey family.
The link to John Davis, & Sally Barns, of Christchurch has been revealed by 9 DNA matches so far, and these are reinforced by common ancestor links shown up on Ancestry.
Three matches are through John Davis' son John, 1803-1890 and his son John, 1832-1909. These are to Lesley Davis, Averil Jane Davis, (who has a ThruLines link on Ancestry) and very recently to Gareth Anthony Adams. There is another match to Caroline Miller shared by Averil and Gareth but her connection is to be worked out.
The second line from John is through his daugher Emmeline, 1811-1882 through Elizabeth Spurrier to Edward Henry Collington of Poole, 1870-1940, to Lesley Barbara Collington, his granddaughter. Another match on this line comes from Edward's brother Samuel George Collington to his great-granddaughter Tracy Brown, whose son matches at 9cM on 1 segment.
The third line with 4 matches is through John's son James, 1807-1885, to his daughter (and my great-grandmother) Sarah Ann Davis, 1842-1926. Her eldest son, Tom Galton, 1875-1948 leads to my mother Edith Elsie Galton to which mine, my children and my nieces all match. Tom's eldest son Harry, 1877-1828, leads to Corinne J Thompson, via her mother Maureen Gibbs, 1936-2016. Corinne also has a grandson with a match on this line.
The fourth line came to light as a result of two matches that appeared in January 2022 to a Davis who is a son of John & Sally, previously unknown to me, who moved to Poole around 1830. He is George Davis. He had 6 children and two of these have DNA matches. The most interesting and complex analysis is based on the descendants of Tom Davis.
These matches were for Christine Hawker at 23cM and for Michael Pearce at 26cM. Both were new to Ancestry and had no trees or any other information. A quick look at matches shared between us showed that we had matches in common That indicated a connection to my mother’s grandmother from Poole, Dorset. Furthermore it also showed that Christine and Michael shared 522cM on 23 segments; so were very closely related.
So I messaged them both in the hope that they were more than just interested in their ethnic origins! Both replied very quickly and both were seeking answers to gaps in their family history. So this is an account of what they wanted to know and what came to light.
Michael, in his 80s, was seeking his mother’s father. His mother, Winifred Ada James, discovered relatively late in life that the family she was brought up by in Bristol were not her biological parents. Her birth certificate showed that her surname was different and her mother was actually the sister of the person she thought was her father. The family had already discovered that Michael’s mother’s mother, Ada Hollard, came from Poole and was married to (and had 7 other children) by her husband Leybourne. They also knew that Leybourne was a POW in Germany at the time that Winifred was conceived and born. All of Ada’s children were born in Poole except Winifred who was born near Great Yarmouth!
The other match, Christine, also in her 80s, was trying to find the origins of her father. His name, marriage and death are all in the records but not his birth, nor his father’s name on the marriage record; the space was ruled over. However the full details of her mother, including her mother’s name with three given names was known, all Davis.
For my research I quickly realised that the match between the three of us hinged on a branch of my mother’s side of the family I had not previously recorded. Adding them to my records soon built a tree that showed the DNA link between Christine and Michael must be a most recent common ancestral pair in Poole who married in 1872 and had 3 sons and 2 daughters. So the hypothesis was that one of these 3 sons was the father of Winifred based on the DNA match relationships. By looking at the situation and life information from the census’ it seemed that one, George William Davis, who lived in the same street within a few doors of Ada was the most likely candidate. It also was perhaps relevant that George’s wife died around that time too.
Identified connections have appeared in matches done on DNA Painter and other analyses done so far for the Gattrell and related families. This is a fast moving area of research and changes are frequent! The analysis on DNA Painter shows a complex set of matches with origins in Wareham and the Isle of Purbeck; Poole itself and then the families from around Christchurch in Hampshire.
As with the Galtons, there are strong indications of connections from Dorset and Hampshire matches to Newfoundland including the surnames of Anstey, Davis, Galton, Verge and Pelley. It seems most likely that this connection is to the Anstey family of which there is a One-Name study. 'Our' branch is from those of Poole though the family is ancient and comes from Anstey in Hertfordshire where a descendant of a Norman family was granted land. It has its own web site here, and there is a book that describes the studies of which I have a copy.
Revised on December 2022.