Common Ancestor Tales

1.0 Research methods and Justification

This project is a follow on from my previous post which was a deep paper trail dive into this Upsdell family. At the end of that research I decided I wanted to try and prove their tree used shared DNA on Ancestry. The project is focusing on data a long way back – the period we are looking at runs from end of Charles II reign to just the start of the reign of Queen Victoria when Jacob Upsdell (1778-1849) died.

I have done done DNA research for this project over a period of a week. It probably has some way to go yet but I feel that we have some good initial results to start reporting back to you.

Ancestry thrulines depend on a number of people having good trees which go deep down to descendents of siblings and are accurate. Unfortunately in this Upsdell family quite a lot trees on Ancestry have the wrong parents for the children of Isaac (1741). Many give them give John Upsdell and Mary Penn – however after my last post we now know from Isaac’s Will that Elizabeth Ede, Isaac, Jacob, Ann and Sarah were all his children. The Will also names the three daughters as Ann Cook, Sarah Whitewood and Elizabeth Ede Tipp and explicitly names his son-in-laws. This incorrect parentage will have impacted the thrulines so correcting it may in time have an impact on the matches people are aware of.

I am hoping that through this project we will correct some of those trees and this will have an impact longer term. Searching through the data by hand is of course a tried and tested method for finding matches but Thru-lines when they work are extremely powerful. I have frequently be suprised by the connections thrulines make that prove to be correct or at least give me a hint that there is more than one connection between two people.

I know there are sceptics about their use but I have found that the vast majority of the thrulines in my trees are correct when I fact check them. They are an amazing tool to help unpick tricky problems. And my favourite scenaario is when a new thruline just pops up one day based on evidence elsewhere in other peoples trees.

This could happen for some of our unknowns in this tree – I have watched it occur over periods of time on my own families tree. In this way research becomes an exercise in patience but quite a satisfying one. In my Harris tree I was able to put speculative new siblings on my tree and gradually get thrulines that proved them correct. Over time I moved from zero siblings for my ancestor to finding solid links between four siblings. I am still chasing two more! I guess one motivation for me in doing this project is to test if I can transfer some of the tricks I have learnt elsewhere to a family that I know little about.

My other thought in starting this project is that aside from providing some valuable confirmation of this particular tree, it is also a good case study to test out how we can use the sharing DNA functionality in Ancestry to do deeper analysis. This crowd sourcing approach to DNA is mainly done in tools like GEDmatch which is mainly aimed at the advanced DNA analyst. However the truth is that most of us are on the more commerical tools like ancestry. So I was interested to see how far we could go proving trees using just the Ancestry tools.

My last post covered the History of the Upsdell family in Deptford and Camberwell was phase one of this project. What I noticed from all the tree’s online is that there is a break in the evidence between where Isaac Upsdell and Ann Matthews grew up in Bishop Waltham and where they moved to work in Deptford many miles away in the early 1700s.

So one aim of the project is to about trying to find more evidence to establish that the link between them. In truth it is quite far back so this is quite ambitious – to provide a definite link will probably take more than the tools that Ancestry DNA gives us. But I am interested to see how far we can get.

The steps I took to kick the project off were:

1. I identified that this family would make a good contained research project.
2. wrote a detailed piece about the family researching everything I could on the internet.
3. I made a new seperate tree of the Upsdell familly for this research added down to the matches I have (this is a work in progress) – for those on ancestry the tree is here.
4. I firstly went through all the trees on ancestry that went right back and messaged those people sharing my post about the families history and explaining why I wanted to share DNA.
5. Once one or two of them had shared their DNA I was able to reach out to their matches using thrulines and other matches I had found through looking at their shared matches (I pay for ancestry protools so I can see right down to to matches at 6cM).
6. I ended up sending about 100 messages – from that 12 kind souls shared my enthusiasm and were kind enough to share their DNA with me. I only had one slightly negative response. Some others just shared their thrulines which is fine.
7. I pored over the data for a few days. Unfortunately when you are trying to get back to the early 1700’s thrulines rarely give you any clues. So it was a great deal of looking for unusual names in one line and then searching for them across all the data sets. I started out by looking for Upsdell in each dataset and that got me a few matches. I found one match to Isaac Upsdell (1777)’s family that way – by searching for the name “Acworth” and “Gordon”/Australia for Isaac. For Elizabeth Ede Upsdell’s family I used Tipp. For the Kitchen family I used Bassam/Bossam. For Sarah it was Whitewood. The matches for Jacob just fell out very easily – they are plentiful! I also explored matches to “Deptford, Kent” more generally – there were lots of them. This was a very interwoven set of famillies.
   

2.0 Bishops Waltham and the paper trail to Deptford

Bishop Waltham is a small market town in Hampshire. We have two records placing Isaac Upsdell and Ann Matthews in this area. Firstly a baptism record where both of them are recorded on the same page in 1704 at St Peters Church, Bishop Waltham. And secondly an apprentice’s record for Isaac in nearby Portsea where he trained to be a locksmith (which was a enhanced form of blacksmithing). The record clearly states that he is the son of Isaac Upsdell of “Waltham.

There are also records that his father Isaac had a first marriage to a Mary Gaddam in St Peters church, Titchfield. On this record Isaac senior is also clearly identified as coming from Bishops Waltham. The records show that Mary died probably in childbirth to her first child John Upsdale (1701). John was baptisted at Bishops Waltham. His second marriage to Ann Hoor was at Bishop Waltham in 1703. Isaac and Ann (nee Hoor) had a large family of which Isaac was the oldest born the following January in 1704. Some of his siblings were also baptised in Bishop Waltham. Isaac (1741) is the only one with an apprenticeship record.

I visited Bishop Waltham recently. St Peter’s church in Bishop Waltham has been on this site since the 1100’s. The church has had considerable changes over the years. The wooden beams for example were added in the 1800s. However the turret on the top of the tower would have been there when Isaac lived here.

Unfortunately the older graves are very damaged and completely illegible so I was unable to find any labelled Upsdell graves. The church itself was large and a norman font was reinstated relatively recently when it was found in someones garden. This could possibly be the font where Isaac (1704) was baptised.

^{St Peter’s Church, Bishop Waltham}

The town itself which is still a relatively small place has some amazing examples of grade 1 listed timber framed buildings that were built in the 1600’s. The town was also the site of a Palace that was knocked down by Oliver Cromwell in the the English civil war in the 1650’s. So by the time Isaac and his father lived here the Palace would have been gone. A lot of the stone from the ruined palace was reussed to build homes in the town.

Titchfield is where records show that Isaac married his first wife – in fact she is described as Mary Garman of Titchfield and they were married in Titchfield church. Tichfield is another ancient Hampshire village. Again the church dates back to the 1200’s – the oldest part of the church is it’s rather endearing spire – they recently restored an ancient saxon window in the spire. So parts of this church were definitely there when Isaac and Mary were married. Some of the buildings in the village also date back to the 1600’s. Nearby to Titchfield is Titchfield Abbey which was a place of historical significance through the years and would still have been in active use in Isaac (1680’s) day.

^{Record Evidence of the early Upsdells in Bishop Waltham and Titchfield}

Titchfield Abbey

Titchfield Abbey (just outside the village)

The Abbey has played host to many monarchs over the centuries, but few occasions matched the spring of 1445, when Henry VI married Margaret of Anjou here. It was a match of real political weight, and the celebrations were suitably grand. One of the more extraordinary details is a lion in chains, linked to the royal menagerie at the Tower of London, that formed part of the wedding story. It’s hard to think of a more striking way to mark a royal union.

Everything changed with the Dissolution of the Monasteries, ordered by Henry VIII and carried out by his chief minister, Thomas Cromwell. Rather than being left to crumble, Titchfield was transformed into a fine country residence: the building we now know as Place House.

The man behind the conversion was Thomas Wriothesley, a loyal servant of the Crown who was handsomely rewarded for his allegiance. Along with the title of 1st Earl of Southampton came the abbeys and estates of both Titchfield and Beaulieu.

Place House soon became a favourite with the royal court. Edward VI, Elizabeth I, and Charles I with his queen Henrietta Maria all came to stay.

For Charles I, Titchfield was to play a fateful role. In November 1647, after escaping from Hampton Court, he sheltered at Place House before crossing to the Isle of Wight. He hoped Carisbrooke Castle would be a refuge; instead it became his prison, and he was held there until his trial and execution in January 1649.

Place House was also home to Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton, best remembered today as William Shakespeare’s patron.

Place House was also home to Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton, best remembered today as William Shakespeare’s patron. Professor Michael Dobson, Director of the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon and Professor of Shakespeare Studies at the University of Birmingham, describes the Earl as a hugely important figure in the playwright’s life.

When plague closed the theatres, Southampton’s financial support allowed Shakespeare to write the long poems he dedicated to him, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece. Their success, says Professor Dobson, “transformed his career”. When the playhouses reopened, Shakespeare had the standing to join the Lord Chamberlain’s Men and become their principal writer. The warm dedication to Lucrece suggests the two men had grown close, or at least that Shakespeare felt deep gratitude for the Earl’s support.

That link has fuelled some intriguing theories. Some historians have suggested that Shakespeare spent part of his so-called “lost years” (roughly 1585 to 1592) working as a schoolteacher in Titchfield.

Others have found echoes of Titchfield in Love’s Labour’s Lost. The play’s references to “the Place”, a park and a knot garden fit neatly with Place House, the parkland around it and the knot garden that once stood in its grounds. Henry V is also said to have stayed at the Abbey before going to war in France, and some believe these historic surroundings helped inspire Shakespeare’s Henry V. It has even been suggested, though never proved, that some of his plays were first performed here. Whatever the truth, the old schoolhouse still stands across the road, inviting you to wonder.

3.1 Matches between the children of Isaac Upsdell (1741)

The four sets of DNA data shown below show ample evidence that these four siblings Sarah, Jacob, Isaac and Elizabeth Ede were indeed siblings and descended form Isaac Upsdell and Sarah Field. There are at least two matches to each sibling across the four sets of data. There were fewest matches to descendents of Isaac Upsdell but two is sufficient. Unfortunately I was not able to find any matches to their fifth sibling Anne who married William Cook another Caulker at Deptford.

3.1.1 Thrulines from Sarah Upsdell’s descendants – the Whitewood line

3.1.2. Thrulines from Jacob Upsdell’s descendants

3.1.3. Thrulines to Descendants of Ede Elizabeth Upsdell – The Tipp line

3.1.4 Thrulines to descendants of Isaac Upsdell (1777)

No data sets have been shared with me by descendants of Isaac yet

3.2 Matches between the children of Thomas Upsdell

Unfortunately at present I have not found any matches between any of Thomas’s siblings. I did however get three sets of data to one daughter Esther Upsdell. If I am sent more DNA I will update this section further.

3.2.1 Thrulines to descendents of Esther Upsdell – The Kitchen line

4.0 Conclusions

This research project is an attempt to see what we could do by crowdsourcing DNA data and see if we could possibly trace this family back to Bishop Waltham using DNA. I wanted to see if the tricks I had learnt on my own family were transferable. We have not managed to prove that link yet. It was an ambitious target. However I am still open to analysing further sets of data if they are sent to me. You can contact me on upsdell@wheatridge.co.uk or via ancestry messaging. Sharing DNA on ancestry is very easy to do and takes just a few minutes.

If descendants of Isaac Upsell (1680) m Ann Hoor and Mary Gaddam and Isaac Upsdell (1704) m Sarah Field were to add these two couples to their tree’s and also perhaps the siblings of Isaac Upsdell (1704) and all of his three adult children – Thomas, John, Isaac then Ancestry thrulines may find more connections organically. So I am hoping that might happen. It has worked for me in the past.

What we have done so far is to throughly prove the family tree for most of the living descendants of Isaac Upsdell which completely fits with his Will. I was suprised not to find descendants of Ann Upsdell m Cook. But again that could yet happen. I have also made a start on understanding how they relate to the descendants of Thomas and John – Isaac’s brothers but that really is in it’s early stages.

For myself this has proved a entertaining and valuable exercise in understanding how you can go from a standing start to understanding a lot about a family in the 1700s in quite a short space of time. This was interesting to me because researching my Harris family in the same period in London has taken me literally years. It was a big lesson that I need to be more upfront about asking others to share their DNA data with me!

Big thanks to the 16 sets of people who were game to share their DNA data with me so far and the enthusiasm with which they corresponded with me – it has been taxing but fulfilling to unravel this so over the last couple of weeks ! I am open to any ideas about how to take this forward.