Where Were My Smale Ancestors A Century Ago?

Posted on 26 January 2023 by

Having recently subscribed to the 1921 Census with FindMyPast, I’ve been looking up various branches of my family to see what they were up to back then. Today I’m concentrating on my Smale family who branch off my maternal line.

My first port of call was 22 Ford Street in Tavistock, Devon. There were 8 people at the address occupying a total of 4 rooms. For the purpose of the census, the rooms enumerated are the usual living rooms, including bedrooms and kitchens, but excluding sculleries, landings, lobbies, closets, bathrooms, or any warehouse, office or shop rooms.

The address was the home of my 2 x great-grandparents, William Henry Smale and Grace Smale (née Martin). William was 56 years old and he’d had many occupations which included a farm servant, railway labourer, groom, mail cart driver and omnibus driver. However, in 1921, he was a Roadstone Quarrier and his place of work is stated as Devon County Council although this might actually be in the wrong column and the council might have been his employer, I’m not entirely sure.

William’s wife, Grace, was older than him at 64 years of age and her occupation is shown as home duties. Likewise, her daughter (my gran’s mother) Florence Weaver, née Smale, is also recorded as undertaking home duties. The census was taken on 19th June 1921 and Florence was a 33 year old widow. Little would anyone have known that she would die within 2 months. The cause was mentioned in a contemporary newspaper as meningitis of the brain which she’d been ill with for about a week.

Number 22 was the address where my Granny Geake was born. In 1921 she was there as a 4 year old named Phyllis Grace Weaver. Her father is recorded as dead – he died in WW1 – and there’s no mention that she might have begun attending school by then.

Grace Smale, nee Martin, with her grandaughter, Phyllis Grace Weaver, assumed to be photographed on the doorstep of 22 Ford Street, Tavistock

Grace Smale, nee Martin, with her grandaughter, Phyllis Grace Weaver,
assumed to be photographed on the doorstep of 22 Ford Street, Tavistock

Also residing in the house were two of Florence’s younger brothers, Charles Henry Smale and Percy Smale who were both serving in the Royal Navy. Two other men were boarding with the family; Clarence Hawkin, a cinema operator, and William Maunder, who was an out-of-work labourer.

Elsewhere, another of Grace Smale’s daughters, Edith Ellen Martin (Martin was both her maiden name and her married name), was living with her husband, John, an unemployed carpenter’s labourer, and their two children, (I knew them as Auntie Hilda and Uncle Jack), at 21 Fitzford Cottages, Tavistock. Hilda’s husband-to-be, Alfred Northcott Stenlake, was living not far away at number 18. I’d previously found the Martin family in the 1911 census residing in Curry Rivel, Somerset. John and Edith may have introduced my great-grandmother, Florence, to her husband, Henry James Weaver, as Curry Rivel was his home village. My gran went to live with the Martins after her grandmother, Grace, passed away in 1925. I can’t be certain if they were still at Fitzford Cottages or whether the family had already moved to 43 Crelake Park by then.

Edith Ellen Martin at the front door of 21 Fitzford Cottages, Tavistock

Edith Ellen Martin at the front door of 21 Fitzford Cottages, Tavistock

Grace Smale’s eldest son, William Martin, was living with his family not far away at 29 Exeter Street, Tavistock. Ten years earlier, in 1911, they’d been at 1 Vigo Bridge, Tavistock, which was previously the home of Williams’ wife’s family.

By 1921, William Martin’s half-brother, Bertram Smale, was at the same house, 1 Vigo Bridge, with his wife and two sons. Bertram was an Able Seaman in the Royal Navy working at HMS Defiance in Devonport Dockyard in Plymouth. I too worked at HMS Defiance (now part of HMS Drake) over twenty years ago when the bank sub-branch was there.

William and Grace Smale’s second daughter, Emily, was married to Peter Ingram and they were based at the Army Barracks & Military Hospital in Bodmin, Cornwall. They’d already had their first four children including two year old twins girls who my gran always kept in touch with.

My gran’s Uncle Tom (Thomas Smale) was described in 1921 as a visitor (with ‘boarder’ crossed out) residing at 13 Killigrew Street, Falmouth, Cornwall. He was a signal porter with the Great Western Railway at St Dennis and later worked as a signalman in Tavistock from 1937 until he retired. Uncle Tom was the only one of that generation who I met as he lived until he was 95 years old and was still riding his bicycle around Tavistock when he was in his 90’s.

This leaves two more sons of William and Grace. First there was Stanley George Smale who was boarding at Walkhampton with a family called Harris. Stanley was a groom, working for a J Woodman, horse trainer, at Yennadon near Dousland. Yennadon Down is a favourite area where I frequently go walking which overlooks Burrator Reservoir.

Finally, Philip Henry Smale was a 19 year old driver in the Army located at the Royal Artillery Barracks in Dundalk, Ireland. By a strange co-incidence, my paternal grandfather was born in the same road in 1898 about a mile and a half away in the coastguard cottages at Soldier’s Point, Dundalk. Small world, as they say.

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Why Might James Geake Have Been Brought Up In A Family Which Was Not His Own?

Posted on 31 October 2022 by

In a previous post I demonstrated how DNA revealed that my great-grandfather, James Geake, wasn’t the son of George Geake and Maria, née Dearing, as was previously believed to have been the case. Today I’m going to explore what might have led to James being brought up by the Geakes.

Looking at old census records, we see various terminology to describe relationships. Take, for instance, the term, step-son. This was used correctly on the 1891 census for William Martin, who was the son of Grace Smale nee Martin because the head of the household and Grace’s husband, William Smale, was not William Martin’s father. Go back ten years when Grace was living with her own father, Philip Martin, William and his illegitimate sister, Edith, were described as son-in-law and daughter-in-law. Clearly they were Philip’s grandchildren so it’s surprising to see them referred to in this way.

Returning to the Geakes. James was listed as a son when he was living with George and Maria in both the 1881 census when he was just two months old and also in 1891. The interesting thing is that in 1868, George and Maria had a daughter called Sarah Ann who went on to have an illegitimate child in 1889 called Arthur. By 1891 Sarah was working as a domestic servant in Lifton with a family by the name of Colville. Arthur was living with George and Maria Geake near Peter Tavy and was correctly described as a grandson. He was still with his grandparents in 1901 but this time he was recorded as a son on the census.

In those days it wasn’t unheard of for an unmarried daughter to have a baby which would subsequently be brought up as a child of her parents, ie. the grandparents would stand in as parents, but clearly Arthur’s true relationship couldn’t have been that much of a secret to have originally been described as George and Maria’s grandson. The takeaway here is that relationship descriptions on census records can’t always be relied upon.

So, is it possible that James was the son of one of George and Maria’s children, Sarah Ann perhaps? The answer is that it’s very unlikely for two reasons. Firstly, Sarah was the eldest and she was still only about 12 or 13 years of age when James was born. Secondly, the DNA match I referred to in my previous post who I named Emily was originally thought to have been a second cousin to my mum and others of her generation. If James had been the son of a child of George and Maria then this would make Emily my mum’s second cousin once removed and would likely share DNA with James’ descendants which she doesn’t.

Descendants of Robert Geake and Mary Arscott

Descendants of Robert Geake and Mary Arscott

I next went on a bit of a wild goose chase looking for possibilities on another branch of the Geake family. George Geake’s grandparents were Robert Geake and Mary Arscott. One of their sons was Walter Geake who’d served in the 64th Regiment of Foot and eventually became a Chelsea Pensioner. It must have been whilst serving in Ireland that Walter met Maria Boyd who became his wife within the Diocese of Elphin in 1840. One of their daughters was subsequently born in Sligo. Descendants of James Geake show connections to the Sligo area in their DNA.

Walter and Maria had four daughters who all eventually married. None of the grandchildren were old enough to have been James’ parent so this left the daughters themselves. Again, DNA came into play. If James was descended through Walter’s line we might have expected to find DNA matches to the Geakes and the Boyds. Remarkably, some of my relatives do in fact have tentative matches going back several generations which appear to match on the Geake and Arscott lines. However, I would have hoped to have discovered closer matches to descendants of Walter and Maria if this was how we fitted in. It still remains a possibility that we could have come down through Walter and Maria and just have been unlucky to date that no-one more closely related has taken a DNA test but I am not yet convinced.

I’m not writing off any involvement that Walter and his Irish wife, Maria, nee Boyd, might have had though. Because the DNA has a strong connection to Sligo, I wonder whether Walter and Maria had an influence in bringing James (or his birth mother) to Devon. Perhaps his biological family knew the Boyds. It’s difficult otherwise, to see how a child with close genetic links to the Sligo and Mayo areas of Ireland might have ended up in Devon.

Might his mother have died in childbirth? Could she have been unmarried or too poor to support him? What about his father? Were the Geakes financially compensated in any way? Adoption wasn’t legalized in England until 1926 so could the informal arrangement have been organised by a third party? There are still many unanswered questions. Only DNA may be able to resolve some of them one day as no documented records are likely to reveal the truth.

[UPDATE: The mystery of James Geake’s parentage continues but the surname Kilmartin/Gilmartin from the area of Sligo in Ireland crops up numerous times amongst our family’s DNA matches.]

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Geake Family: DNA Goes Some Way Towards Uncovering The Truth

Posted on 21 October 2022 by

Don’t want to read? Click PLAY to hear an AI-generated audio discussion on this blog post’s key topics.
(The audio was produced by NotebookLM Deep Dive Conversation.)

For some time I’ve been working on a family history mystery. The records for my great-grandfather, James Geake, state he was born in 1881 at Wapsworthy, a small farm a couple of miles away from the village of Peter Tavy and about five miles from the town of Tavistock in Devon. He was purportedly the son of George Geake and Maria Dearing, both of whose ancestry traces further back in Devon. However, DNA analysis suggests all is not what it seems.

I have access to a number of DNA kits belonging to people who descend from James Geake but I’ve not been able to find any useful DNA matches on either the Geake or the Dearing side. Most of these relatives have a lot of Irish and Scottish ethnicity in their DNA which I suspect is on James’ line and this doesn’t fit at all with James supposedly having ancestors from Devon.

Here are the Irish and Scottish AncestryDNA ethnicity estimates for my relatives.

My mum – Ireland: 30%, Scotland: 20%.
My aunt – Ireland: 28%, Scotland: 21%.
My mum’s 1st cousin No.1 – Ireland: 38%, Scotland: 12%.
My mum’s 1st cousin No.2 – Ireland: 30%, Scotland: 65% (we are related to this person on her father’s side but her mother was from Scotland so this would explain the higher Scottish ethnicity).
My mum’s 1st cousin once removed No.1 – Ireland: 23%, Scotland: 16%.
My mum’s 1st cousin once removed No.2 – Ireland: 18%, Scotland: 15%.

AncestryDNA Genetic Communities for the descendants of James Geake

AncestryDNA Genetic Communities for the descendants of James Geake

The map shows the Irish DNA genetic communities at Ancestry which are specific to some of these relatives. Mum’s 1st cousin No.1 has all of these regions. My aunt has all but the small region of North Leitrim & East Sligo. My mum shows North Connacht and the region of North East Mayo & North West Sligo but not North Mayo and no Central Ireland. Mum’s 1st cousin No.2 just has North East Mayo & North West Sligo but no other Irish regions. The two 1st cousins once removed don’t have specific Irish genetic communities but my mum passed the North East Mayo & North West Sligo region on to me. This demonstrates a strong connection to these areas amongst the four of James Geake’s grandchildren who have tested. There surely has to be something in this!

It’s worth noting that my mum and aunt do in fact have Devon genetic communities as does one of the 1st cousins once removed. This can be explained by the fact that James Geake’s wife had Devon ancestry so Devon ancestors will be common to all of the above mentioned relatives. James Geake and his wife, Sarah May Hellyer, were my mum’s paternal grandparents but there were North Devon ancestors on my mum’s maternal grandmother’s side too.

All these ethnicity estimates and the lack of the expected DNA connections was pointing in the direction of James Geake not being George Geake and Maria Dearing’s son. Now I wanted to find some further evidence to substantiate my theory.

James Geake had an older sister called Maria Geake who married Henry Albert Carpenter. My mum knew her as her Great-aunt Maria (pronounced Mariah as in Mariah Carey). Mum has always known Maria’s grand-daughter who I’ll call Emily to protect her identity. Emily kindly agreed to take a DNA test and the results came back showing no match to any of the descendants of James Geake. Emily should have been my mum’s 2nd cousin and all 2nd cousins should share DNA. Even half 2nd cousins would be expected to share DNA but there is no match to any of Emily’s four supposed 2nd cousins.

Emily has DNA connections on the Geake and Dearing lines so this indicates that James was the odd one out. In addition, she only has 6% Irish ethnicity and no Scottish ethnicity. Therefore, my long-held suspicion that James Geake was not the son of his documented parents seems to be correct.

I would add that there are one or two distant DNA matches that we have in common with Emily which I think are likely to be co-incidences. Emily has a lot of Devon ancestry and, as previously stated, so do we. Autosomal DNA can’t tell you which family line you are looking at when you see a match so a lot of time is spent studying family trees to find ancestors in common with your DNA matches. There’s a good chance that our DNA might match with descendants of Devon ancestors which also match with Emily but on different branches of our families. At first glance, they look like Geake and Dearing connections but we now know this is unlikely, unless we have a more distant connection to these families back in time.

It’s disappointing to discover that we’re not biologically related to Emily and her family but, nonetheless, her ancestors are still part of my own family’s story as James was brought up in the Geake household as one of their own. In my mind that makes Emily’s ancestors my ‘adoptive’ family and there are still descendants of James who bear the Geake name to this day.

One final anecdote – a relative once told my mum that James Geake used to celebrate his birthday on the 23rd January but, much later in life, he obtained a copy of his birth certificate. This was when he discovered he was actually born on the 25th. It makes me wonder if he really was born on the 23rd before being handed to the Geakes a couple of days later. What’s more, did James ever know they weren’t his biological parents?

My next post asks the question “Why Might James Geake Have Been Brought Up In A Family Which Was Not His Own?”

[UPDATE: James Geake seems to have had strong genetic ties to Sligo in Ireland. The mystery of his parentage continues but the surname Kilmartin/Gilmartin from that area crops up numerous times amongst our family’s DNA matches.]

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A Dando Family Puzzle – Mystery Solved

Posted on 22 July 2022 by
The North American and Daily Advertiser, (Philadelphia, PA) - 26 August 1844

The North American and Daily Advertiser, (Philadelphia, PA)
– 26 August 1844

Some time ago, whilst I was trying to investigate my 3 x great-grandmother, Harriet Catherine Dando, née Williams, I came across this notice in the North American and Daily Advertiser, (Philadelphia, PA) dated Monday 26th August 1844. Harriet was the fifth wife of my 3 x great-grandfather, Joseph Dando, the Younger.

I’d originally found myself a bit stumped as to who everyone mentioned in the article was but I’ve finally managed to piece it all together. The Joseph mentioned was likely to be my 3 x great-grandfather’s son, Joseph Clifford Dando, born in 1830 to his second wife, Helen Sheriff (or Stirling). There’s some ambiguity over her surname. Then Charles is probably their second son, Charles Sterling Dando, born in 1833. He was baptised as Charles Sheriff Dando but later went by the name Sterling Dando. There were other Charles Dandos living at that time so this had initially led to some confusion.

Then there was the question of who was Stephano Dando, as it looked in the article. I’d previously thought it was meant to read as Stephen Dando. Joseph Dando, the Younger, had an Uncle Stephen who was still alive and lived in New York so I’d wondered if he might have travelled home to visit family. Not so.

Various Dando descendants around the globe have in their possession handwritten family trees and these all mention a Stevannah Dando but I could find no record of someone by that name. According to these family trees, she was purportedly the daughter of Joseph Dando, the Younger, and his third wife, Jane Clark, whom he married in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1836. Jane died on 31st December 1839.

Then recently, I found a burial and death record for a Stephana Dando in Bristol in 1847. She lived at Castle Green where I know her father, Joseph, lived around then. She was 9 years old when she was buried on 2 April 1847 in the Parish of St Augustine the Less, thus she would have been born in about 1838, most likely in Philadelphia, which fits with the timeframe when Joseph was married to Jane. The 1844 journey to England would confirm why her death was recorded in this country.

I’m in the habit of considering name variatons when researching family history but I’ve never before come across the name, Stephana, (not to mention the Stevannah misspelling) so this is why I’d had difficulty joining all the dots.

AI Generated image depicting the Dando family travelling on the Monongahela

AI Generated image depicting the Dando family travelling on the Monongahela, owned by Captain Turley

Something I still haven’t ascertained is when did Joseph Dando, the Younger, travel back to England. My 2 x great-grandfather, William Elbert Dando, was born to Joseph and Harriet in Philadelphia in 1843. When did he come back to England and why did such a young child not travel with his mother? Perhaps one day I’ll find Joseph and William Elbert together on a passenger list.

[UPDATE: The Pennsylvania Church and Town Records mention that Joseph and Harriet Dando and Harriet Richards, the servant, moved to England in 1845. We know the two Harriets travelled in 1844 but perhaps it was the following year when Joseph returned.]

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AncestryDNA’s Ethnicity Inheritance Tool

Posted on 1 July 2022 by

Not long ago, Ancestry introduced a new DNA tool called Ethnicity Inheritance where they apparently show you which ethnicities you have inherited from each parent – even if your parents haven’t taken DNA tests.

As it happens, both of my parents have tested so I was curious to see how the ethnicity inheritance results on my own and my younger brother’s tests compared to my parents’ actual DNA ethnicity results. Remember, these ethnicity splits are ignoring my parents’ actual tests and just estimating the split using their technology they call SideView and applying it to my and my brother’s results. It’s also worth bearing in mind that we only receive half of each parent’s DNA leaving half that we don’t. In addition, the 50% you receive is random which is just as well otherwise we’d all be identical twins to our siblings!

Ancestry initially label the parents as Parent 1 and Parent 2 and it’s up to you to label them yourself if you think you can work out which side is which. You need to have studied your family tree to do this and you’ll want some variation between each parent. I’m fairly confident that I have the paternal and maternal side correct and so I added these labels manually.

Below you’ll firstly see the ethnicity results taken directly from my parents’ DNA kits and then you’ll see my and my brother’s actual ethnicity results together with what Ancestry believes we each received from each parent.

My Dad's DNA Ethnicity

My Dad’s DNA Ethnicity

My Mum's DNA Ethnicity

My Mum’s DNA Ethnicity

My Ethnicity Breakdown

My Ethnicity Breakdown

My Brother's Ethnicity Breakdown

My Brother’s Ethnicity Breakdown

As stated, we don’t get an exact 50% split from each parent’s individual ethnicity but, for the purposes of this exercise, I’ve halved their figures to see how my brother and I compare to our parents.

Half of my dad’s ethnicity would be…

England & Northwest Europe: 41%
Norway: 3.5%
Wales: 3%
Scotland: 1.5%
Sweden & Denmark: 1%

Half of my mum’s ethnicity would be…

England & Northwest Europe: 23%
Ireland: 16%
Scotland: 8%
Norway: 1.5%
Wales: 1.5%

So what do we see?

Both my brother and I received a fairly accurate split of England & Northwest Europe from each parent. I’m a little top heavy on the Ireland region whereas my brother has a lot more from Scotland. I seem to have all of my dad’s Norway whereas my brother received a little from both parents. I got my dad’s 2% Sweden & Denmark but my brother has none and, for me, the Wales was a fairly good split between each parent but my brother got all his Wales from my mum.

It’s interesting to note that, when I went into the ethnicity inheritance estimates for my parents, I wasn’t able to work out which parent was which when I looked at my dad’s split. Ancestry believe my dad received 43% England & Northwest Europe from one parent and 39% from the other and the smaller regions don’t really give me any clues.

I was much more confident with my mum’s estimate as she received 44% England & Northwest Europe from one parent and only 2% from the other. This would account for my gran’s North Devon and Somerset ancestry. Mum also shows 32% Ireland and 16% Scotland from the other parent only and this is born out by the fact that my aunt and two more of their paternal first cousins (who have quite distinctive splits) point to similar results on my grandpa’s side of the family. Scotland and Ireland have close ties in genetic terms. I still have not identified where this DNA comes from but I have a suspicion that my grandfather’s father, James Geake, might not have been the son of the parents named on his birth certificate.

[UPDATE 2025: through further DNA testing and analysis, I have since learned that my great-grandfather, James Geake, was not the son of his recorded parents and that he had strong genetic ties to Sligo in Ireland. The mystery continues but the surname Kilmartin/Gilmartin from that area crops up numerous times amongst our family’s DNA matches. Read about the DNA discovery here.

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