Looking for relatives in Saskatchewan, Canada

When I first started researching my roots, I fully expected to discover that my maternal grandfather wasn't the biological child of David Scott Ritchie Sr, the footman from Mayfair. I had grown up with the family myth that Grandad's strong resemblance to Henry Duke of Gloucester suggested some sort of misattributed paternity. Perhaps his mother Maude had been seduced by her employer or had a liaison with another man. Yet a solid DNA link to a cousin in Canada confirm the documentary records, eliminating all doubt on that score.

In spite of this, I did not pay much attention to the Canadian link. Since my grandparents left England and came directly to South Africa, it seemed more useful to focus on connections in England itself. Months have gone by with little progress however, and so, in an effort to get things moving again, I am revisiting the story. My hope is that someone in Saskatchewan or thereabouts may come across this post, recognise some of the names and places in it, and get in touch.

The story begins with my great-grandfather's brother, William Ritchie. He was born in Stratford, Essex, England on 6 September 1871, the eldest son of William  and Emma Eliza Ritchie. His father died of ptomaine poisoning when he was 11, leaving his mother to raise her four children, including an infant, on her own.

William, it appears, left home as soon as he finished school. He became a furniture dealer and married Ada Sarah Ann Burfoot in Blackfriars, London. The couple settled in Brixton and had three sons; William, born in 1902, David Scott,,, born in 1903, and Thomas Scott, born in 1904. Then, In 1913, they emigrated to Saskatchewan, Canada and became Canadian citizens.

I should say at this point that David Scott of Brixton is not the same David Scott who was my grandfather, even though they have the same name and were born just one year apart. David Scott of Brixton was Grandad's first cousin — not that Grandad ever spoke about him, or any other cousins for that matter. The two boys could have grown up as close friends had the Brixton Ritchies not left England. It isn't clear why they moved, unless William and Ada simply felt like a fresh start. Perhaps they wanted to escape having to look after William's sister-in-law, given that his brother — my great-grandfather — had been sent away to an asylum. Whatever the case, William must have been relieved to have gotten his wife and sons out of Europe by the time war broke out a year later.

I haven't researched all three of William's sons but I do know that David Scott of Brixton married Lula Belle Samuels in Winnipeg, Canada in 1927. Lula Belle was the daughter of Edgar F Samuels and Sarah Jane Warren. She was born on 23 March 1902 in the United States, emigrated to Manitoba in 1912, and moved to Saskatchewan in 1916. David and Lula Belle lived in Melville all their lives. David died on 9 December 1972 and Lula Belle died in 1982.

David and Lula Belle had one daughter named Dorothy Elizabeth Ritchie. Dorothy Elizabeth was born on 9 July 1928 in Melville, Saskatchewan and married Charles Edward Stewart in  Melville in about 1950. The couple had several children, many of whom are still living in Canada today. Dorothy Elizabeth Stewart died on 19 July 2005 in Toronto.

As I said, it's my hope that this blog post will  attract the attention of readers with shared connections to William and Ada Ritchie. If that happens, we will be able to exchange information on the parents of William Sr and my great-grandfather. I am especially interested in hearing about how my distant cousins in Canada feel about the so-called "old country", since I too am descended from immigrants. Please contact me if this post rings any bells, or share it with others whom you think may benefit from it. Thank you.

Photo credit: "White-tailed Deer, provincial animal of Saskatchewan" by Daryl Mitchell.

 Daryl Mitchell

Finally, a real breakthrough!

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.

New and surprising possibilities arising from my study of shared DNA matches

The lockdown in South Africa has created more time for pastimes like family history research. This week, I've had fun devoting several days to working through my DNA matches, Looking specifically for relatives on the Ritchie side. In this post, I will summarise my method for finding missing information and lay out my findings thus far.

As mentioned earlier in this blog, I tested my DNA through 23andMe in early 2019. The platform has some really useful features, including a place to make notes on the profile page of every one of my DNA relatives. I use this area to write down interesting facts about each person, such as whether they list a significant family name and which branch of my family they might belong to. I also keep track of when i message them, as well as anything they tell me by return message.

Last year, i took advantage of a special offer and had my aunt’s DNA tested as well. She is the daughter of David Scott Ritchie and Florence Sanderson, the only remaining relative I have in that generation. This time the test was done through My Heritage. I copied my results from 23andMe and added them to My Heritage. This let me compare our results with a view to clarifying which set of relatives I should focus on.

Both 23andMe and My Heritage offer excellent features for amateur genealogists. Furthermore, each has its own database of new matches. Using them together, I came up with my own little treasure hunt that kept me absorbed for hours.

The method involvs listing the surnames on my aunt’s chart of DNA relatives, then searching for those surnames among my 1400-odd matches on 23andMe. Here is an example of what I was able to learn:

One of the surnames on my aunt's list was Knight. when I turned to my list of DNA relatives on 23andMe and typed Knight into the search bar, seven results came up. The strongest match was someone with the surname H and the name Knighton on their surname list. Not very encouraging at first glance, until I discovered that the name Bland was there as well. Bland is the surname of my great-grandfather's mother, but on my grandmother Florence Sanderson's side, not David's

Further investigation showed that another relative linked to the surname Knight may have come from East London, which is where Florence Sanderson [Sandy] was born. I messaged the person to ask for more information. If the Knight surname does indeed belong on Florence's side, I will need to pursue some of the other, apparently weaker, surname matches to identify the ones that belong on David's side.

Meanwhile, I made what I thought was an exciting discovery on 23andMe. I found a DNA match with the surname Hilliard, a version of which belongs firmly on David's side. Emma Eliza Hillyard was the mother of David Scott Ritchie Sr, my great-grandfather. On the profile page of this DNA relative, I wrote excitedly, "I messaged her on 20 April 2020. It is very possible that we are related through the parents of William Hillyard [born about 1830 in Suffolk], who was the father of Emma Eliza Hillyard. If this turns out to be so, the DNA link will confirm my genetic connection to David Ritchie Sr, and thereby prove that Grandad was not adopted."

The reply I received didn't sound very hopeful, however. The person concerned provided lots of interesting information about her branch of the Hilliard family but they live in Australia and have little information about their English roots.

Undaunted, I visited the profiles of all the DNA relatives shared by my Hilliard relative and me in an effort to confirm the connection to Emma Eliza. Initially, I was encouraged because many of them either live in the UK or can trace their roots to Great Britain. however, one DNA relative put paid to this hope. He came up as a shared relative between me and someone who is almost certainly connected to me through my Dutch ancestors.

Even so, there is a glimmer of hope. My Hilliard relative is over ninety and lived for some time in the Netherlands after WWII. It is possible that our shared relative with links to Holland may be a young person descended from one of her children. 

If that is the case, it may completely scramble my theories up to this point. I have been confidently placing anyone with hints of Dutch ancestry on my father's side of the family, since his mother descended from a very large and established family in the Rotterdam area. Now it looks as though several of  these DNA relatives with links to Holland may, in fact, all fit on my mother's side. How fascinating! I might actually be close to a breakthrough!

Photo credit: "Amsterdam canal houses by Johan Teyler (1648 -1709)" Original from The Rijksmuseum. Digitally enhanced by rawpixel.

Refining my search for DNA relatives

I had intended to keep this blog updated regularly but, unfortunately, I have let my reporting lapse. This is a catch-up post. Contrary to the way things appear, I have made some progress in my search for my grandfathers background.

Most importantly, my cousin and I took a decision at the end of 2019 to get my aunts DNA assessed. We ordered the kit from My Heritage and my aunt supplied a sample for analysis. When the results came back, I uploaded my own DNA results from 23andMe to My Heritage so the two samples could be compared. This made it possible to separate the DNA relatives on my maternal grandparents’ side from the DNA relatives on my paternal grandparents’ side

Even so, the process of tracing family lines is fairly complicated. Most of the DNA relatives that come up are third to sixth cousins. They could relate to people in my grandmother Sandy’s lying and not my grandfather David’s line. I will have to keep plugging away until I find DNA relatives with surnames I recognise or, at least, from distinctive locations in the UK before i can say for sure that a particular grouping of matches belongs to David himself.

Other news is that I have made an application for David Scott Ritchie’s unabridged death certificate in the hope that it will show his place of birth. As described earlier in this blog, all attempts to find his birth certificate have been in vain. In order to apply for UK citizenship, I need some sort of official documentation proving that he was born in England. The unabridged death certificate should, theoretically, have this information on it although I still don’t know whether it does because it has not yet been found. This in spite of the fact that I have been waiting on the South African Department of Home Affairs for a full 12 months.

Such are the challenges of tracing ones lineage! I could get frustrated but prefer to keep a positive outlook and regard it all as one big, fascinating adventure. When all is said and done, the past is the past and we must live in the present.
Photo credit: "DNA Kit" by Geoff Stearns.

In search of second cousins on my mother's side

I've decided to take a break from reporting on David Ritchie Sr's mental illness in order to post a couple of updates on my search for DNA relatives. According to 23andMe, we each have about 250 first and second cousins, which I find amazing and hard to believe. my own family is really small, with just 2 cousins on my mother's side and 2 on my father's side. How can it be that this number could multiply so quickly?

Let's look at definitions. A first cousin is someone who shares a set of grandparents with you. He or she is the child of one of your parent's siblings. In my case, my mother's sister had 2 children who are my first cousins on my mother's side, and my father's sister had 2 children who are my first cousins on my father's side. Neither my mother nor my father had a brother, so that's it.

A second cousin, by definition, is someone who shares a set of great-grandparents with you. he or she is the child of one of your parents' first cousins. At this point, i find myself rather stumped. i don't know any of my parents' first cousins. Why? It never even occurred to me to ask about it while my parents were alive. Now that I am looking into my family's history, it strikes me as rather puzzling and worth investigating.

I'll focus today on my mother's side. Her parents, Dave and Sandy Ritchie, were both only children. At least, that's the story. Grandma definitely didn't have siblings. Grandad always claimed that he had no brothers or sisters but that's not completely true. i have a census record where his mother Maude states that she gave birth to 2 children, one of whom is living and one of whom died. Then there is the fact that Grandad appears on the 1911 census as the "son" of Emily and William Smith. Did they formally adopt him? I don't think so, as it is Maude, not Emily, who is pictured in photographs of my grandfather and my aunt as a baby. Yet they must have thought of him as part of their family to have called him a son on the census.

To give some background, Emily was Maude's elder sister. Emily and William were looking after Grandad because his father, my great-grandfather, had been committed to an asylum a couple of years earlier. Their children would have been like brothers and sisters to my grandfather while he was at school. That being the case, it follows that the Smiths' grandchildren should have been like my mother's cousins. And, taking the argument to its logical conclusion, the children of those grandchildren should be like my second cousins, if not by blood then by virtue of descending from a common childhood home.

As far as locating these people is concerned, I'm making slow progress. I've managed to establish that the Smiths had 5 of their own children, all of whom were born in Marylebone. They are, in order of birth, LS Smith [a girl] born in 1892, FE Smith [a boy] born in 1893, Alice M Smith born in 1899, Ivy Smith [a boy] born in 1902, and Richard William Smith born in 1904. Now the challenge is to track their spouses and children, and those children's spouses and children, until I eventually find descendants of Emily and William who belong to my own generation.

Granted, these descendants wouldn't actually be my second cousins, but so what? I'm going to be painfully short of second cousins if i don't count them. Besides, they are still my relatives on the Parker side. If they don't have old photos and stories about my great-grandfather's childhood, I can still ask them if they are interested in taking a DNA test and locating second cousins of their own.

Photo credit: "Ascending the Stairs" by Thad Zajdowicz.

My DNA results are back!

I'm very excited to report that my DNA results came back from 23andMe last week. It was a busy week so I didn't get to examine them in much detail at the time. Now I'm digging into them and have high hopes for what they might yield in terms of family connections.

The 23andMe DNA test focuses quite extensively on health issues but I won't go into any of that. Of far more interest to readers of this blog is what the test reveals about my ancestry. In this post i will focus on what I've learnt about my connection to population groups around the world, and in future posts i will delve into my DNA relatives. At this point I scarcely know what the process of identifying DNA relatives entails so no promises about imminent genetic breakthroughs!

To recap the story thus far, my daughters bought me a DNA test kit for my birthday in January. While on holiday in England I supplied the requisite amount of saliva and sent off my sample. The sample made its way to the laboratory and was processed. Finally, I received an email containing a link to my results and all the detailed reports.

I learnt that my ancestry is 100% European, composed of the following:

59,4% British and Irish 18,1% French and German 3,2% Scandinavian

With reference to British and Irish ancestry, the evidence suggests that, in the last 200 years, my ancestors probably lived in greater London, greater Manchester, Lancashire, Merseyside, County Durham, Warwickshire, Derbyshire, Cornwall, North Yorkshire and Stoke-on-Trent. Guernsey and Ireland did not feature at all in terms of recent ancestry.

The French and German part of my ancestry relates to people descended from ancient Celtic and Germanic populations which spread from the Netherlands to Austria. My DNA test results suggest that, in the last 200 years, my ancestors were most likely to have lived in the Netherlands with Germany coming in as a "possible match". The researchers were unable to detect enough evidence of recent ancestry from Austria, Belgium, France, Luxembourg or Switzerland.

The portion of my ancestry connected to the Scandinavian countries of Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Iceland is relatively small. My DNA report from 23andMe was unable to provide a detailed breakdown of where my relatives may have lived in the last 200 years. I guess this is because findings are based on matches in the data base and there are presently no matches, or perhaps too few matches to say anything for certain.

As for the rest of my ancestry composition, I have apparently inherited 0,6% of my DNA from Spanish and Portuguese populations, 18,5% from "Broadly North-Western European" populations, and 0,2% from "Broadly Southern European" populations. These last 2 categories exist because DNA is common to several specific populations dotted across a large area, reflecting the migration of people groups way back in history. There is also the possibility, not stated in the report, that this blended DNA could be linkked to royal lineages since the royal families of Europe are known to have intermarried for centuries. I shall make enquiries and bring you the answer when I have it!

Photo credit: "Map of England, Undated" by Nathan Hughes Hamilton.

Beginning my genetic journey with 23andMe

When my daughters asked me what I would like for my birthday this year, I suggested that the whole family contribute towards getting me a DNA testing kit. I love gifts that are useful, and this one tied directly into my new interest in genealogy. Although the girls weren't aware of the current trend in family history that uses DNA to locate ancestors and living relatives, they readily agreed to my idea. Thus it was that, a week before my birthday, while my husband and I were visiting our daughter Tammy in the United Kingdom, I received my 23andMe testing kit, all neatly contained in a chocolate-box-sized package.

Tammy let me take it out of its bag and unwrap it. Then she read the instructions. The first step was to create an online account with 23andMe and register my kit. That was straightforward enough. An email in my inbox confirmed that my account had been created and my kit successfully registered.

The second step was to work out how to use the saliva collection tube. Tammy made a big deal of this for my benefit, calling it "the medical stuff". Actually, It wasn't complicated, but being visually impaired, I needed someone sighted to ensure I did everything right. For one thing, I had to wait at least half an hour after eating dessert before I could take the test. Then I had to be sure the tube was full without putting my finger into it to feel the level. Finally, when the tube was full, it had to be properly sealed according to the directions in order to reach the laboratory without contamination or leakage.

The third step was an online health survey in several parts. Although optional, I was keen to participate in the full experience so I made a start. The questions ranged from naming the medical conditions I had suffered from to stating my general outlook on life. Some sections could be skipped if they were irrelevant but it was certainly a very detailed and thorough questionnaire. I expect many people would find it tedious. For my part, I saw how the answers to the questions could significantly advance research in the field of gene therapy. Since my own blindness is caused by a genetic mutation, and because there's such potential for treating it with stem cell therapy, I support the ethical collection of research data.

There was a cheerful red postbox outside Tammy's flat where I posted the resealed, self-addressed 23andMe package. As I write this, my saliva test kit is somewhere in transit between England and the Netherlands. There is still a lot for me to learn about the process but I firmly believe in learning by doing. This is an experience which will teach me much, not just about my relatives, but about the whole field of identifying and/or treating inherited diseases, conditions and traits.