My work with DNA relatives is finally paying off. After feeling overwhelmed for several months by an influx of notifications about people whose names I couldn’t match with my Ritchie ancestors, There has finally been a breakthrough.
The breakthrough came via an email from My Heritage offering me a theory of relativity. The theory concerns a person who is genetically related to both my aunt and me. The person is a woman in her forties. While the website gives no details about her apart from her name, it does point to a shared ancestor; namely, William Ritchie, the brother of my great-grandfather David Scott Ritchie Sr.
Here is a summary of the family connection:
William Ritchie was the eldest son of his father William and mother Emma ELIZA, born Hillyard. It appears he may have been born before his parents married because his birth was in Stratford, England in 1871 and his parents' marriage took place in 1873. At any rate, other siblings soon followed. His brother David Scott [my great-grandfather] was born in 1873. Then came Thomas Scott in 1879, and lastly, Susan Elizabeth in 1882.
William grew up in the latter years of the nineteenth century and married Ada Sarah Ann Burfoot around the start of the twentieth century. The couple settled in Brixton, Lambeth. When their three sons came along, they continued the tradition of repeating family names. William and Ada's eldest son, born in 1902, was named William. Their second son, born in 1903, was named David Scott. Their third son, born in 1904, was named Thomas Scott. Note that these three boys were my grandfather's cousins, although it is unlikely that the families spent time together. As mentioned elsewhere on this blog, from 1909, my great-grandfather was in Hanwell, an asylum for the insane, and my great-grandmother's primary support network comprised her sisters.
William was a furniture dealer and must have done quite well because, for a while around the time of the 1911 census, his mother Emma Eliza and her second husband James Lavell lived with William and Ada in Wandsworth. [William's father had died of ptomaine poisoning in 1882, after which Emma Eliza had remarried.[
Perhaps the fact that his mother was provided for gave William the freedom and confidence to launch out in a new direction. Perhaps his brother David Scott's institutionalisation at Hanwell made him want to take his wife and sons as far away from London as possible. Whatever the case, the family emigrated to Canada in 1913 and settled in Saskatchewan.
David Scott, William's second son, grew up and married Lula Bell Samuels in 1927. The couple had just one daughter named Dorothy Elizabeth Ritchie, born in Melville, Saskatchewan in 1928. David and Lula Belle lived in Melville until David's death in 1972 and Lula Belle's death in 1982.
Dorothy Elizabeth Ritchie married a man called Charles Edward Stewart. They lived in Melville and had four children. It is one of their daughters whose DNA test reveals her relationship with my aunt and me. This person is my aunt's second cousin twice removed according to My Heritage's theory of relativity, and my third cousin once removed.
I contacted this DNA relative in the hope that she will be interested in exchanging information and photographs about William Ritchie's family with me. Perhaps she will be intrigued to know she has cousins living in South Africa. For me, the importance of this breakthrough is primarily the establishment of a genetic link between myself and the family of William Ritchie, son of William and Emma Eliza. Doubt has always existed about my grandfather's origins on account of his striking resemblance to Henry Duke of Gloucester. A solid DNA link to his documented family of origin means this long-standing family mystery will at last be put to bed.
Which leaves just one question: Is the resemblance to Henry Duke of Gloucester apparent in other members of William Ritchie's family? I hope to find out.
Photo credit: "Little Saskatchewan" by Richard Turenne.
