Archive for March, 2021

Joseph Knight (1736-1808) and his second wife Jane Harvey have long been identified as the parents of Sally Knight (baptised 1798). I now believe that Sally’s parents are in fact Joseph Knight (1763-1837), the eldest son of Joseph Knight (1736-1808) and Elizabeth Mark (1842-1783), and Jane Moss* (1778- ).

Here’s why:

Both my father and myself have had our DNA analysed by Ancestry DNA. I thought I’d play DNA detective and see if I could narrow down who my father’s unknown great-grandfather could be. I grouped my father’s unattributed fourth cousins or closer into clusters and managed to identify a surname of interest. Of the 19 matches in the cluster that had a public tree, I was able to build a tree that connected 14 of them to a common ancestor couple. So I had a tree and a hypothesis that someone on it or connected to it was my father’s mystery great grandfather. Where to next? I decided to link my father, his parents and maternal grandmother to the tree though proxies and see what Ancestry DNA would throw up in terms of connections with shared matches.

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