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Degerness and Ross Family History

Family History

Tracing the United Empire Loyalist

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In general, the United Empire Loyalists were those who had been settled in the 13 colonies at the outbreak of the American Revolution, who remained loyal to the British crown and took up the Royal Standard, and who settled in what is now Canada at the end of the war.

The above quote comes from the United Empire Loyalist Association of Canada (UEL). As a genealogist, I was excited to learn that my grand daughters were possibly related to a United Empire Loyalist. Those that can prove they descend from a loyalist are entitled to use UE (for Unity of Empire) after their name. This is the only inherited post-nominal in Canada.

So, away I went to start my tracing of descendants backwards through time. It’s a little more work than accepting hints through Ancestry (which I would never do BTW), and it was a lot of fun. I wasn’t alone in my endeavour as the UEL Victoria branch genealogists were awesome in suggesting additional avenues to explore and helping me to find documents and fill out the forms.

The first three generations were easy – they are all alive. It meant that I (or actually they) could order the long form birth certificates from the BC Vital statistics. Of course, the BC government wants their pound of flesh for that.

Back one more generation and we were still spending money. That was because, in this case, we were able to get another long form birth certificate. This time for their great-grandfather. As he has not yet been deceased for 20 years nor born more than 100 years ago, I won’t show you that document here.

For the next generation we moved to his mother – Ida Bernice JACKMAN, I was able to locate a British Columbia Death Certificate which nicely showed both of Ida’s parents. This gave us the name of Ida’s mother Jessie. (For all women, I am referring to them using their birth names, not their married names.)

Jessie Eustace PRESTON is a nice, fairly unique, name. I was able to locate her Ontario birth record, which provided the names of both her parents including her mother Mary Jane BOYNTON.

To locate the parents of Mary Jane BOYNTON, I located another death record from BC and supplemented that information with a marriage record from Ontario. Her mother was Sarah GHENT.

Sarah GHENT was the only generation where I needed to provide a genealogy proof as the documents did not provide a direct link to her parents. Her marriage records did not indicate the name of her parents.

Her death record also lacked detail and no birth or baptism record could be located.

Therefore, I needed to establish who her parents were. So, I began a search in the place where they got married – the township of King in County York of what is now Ontatio. I searched for all the marriages with the last name GHENT in a 10 year time frame on either side of Sarah’s marriage [for those who think I wouldn’t have done this for the last name Smith, you are wrong, I would have, it just would have taken longer]. A few of those marriages included the parents named William GHENT and Mary FONGER.

From that, I looked for more possible children of William and Mary. The one thing that all of the children had in common is that they were either married or born in King.

Then I built a family tree of all of the suspected children of William and Mary GHENT to see if the birth dates of the children could all fit into one family tree.

Sarah GHENT in the middle of the family and fits quite nicely with the others.

Land records from Ontario showed that William GHENT had owned property in King Township since 1821.

Adding to that, the directories from 1837 and 1847, surrounding the year 1841 when Sarah married, indicated only one GHENT (William) living in King at the time.

Success, we have established that the most likely parents of Sarah GHENT were William GHENT and Mary FONGER.

To prove the connection from William GHENT to the next earlier generation we were lucky enough to find land records that explicitly spelled out the connection.

William GHENT … eldest son and heir of Thomas GHENT and Elizabeth GHENT his wife … the said Elizabeth GHENT being a daughter of William DAVIS Senior an U.E. Loyalist.

That pretty much also covered my last two generations, but wanting to be thorough, I found land records for Elizabeth and Thomas that included and affidavit by the Clerk of the Peace confirming their marriage. Elizabeth’s headstone (found on FindAGrave) also confirmed her maiden name as DAVIS.

Notice she doesn’t actually get a name – is only the “daughter of”

The last step was to confirm that William Davis was indeed on the UEL lists, which he was.

And, just like that (don’t you wish it happened as fast as on the TV shows), we have 11 generations linked from my granddaughters to their eighth great-grandfather William Alexander Davis.

If you are interested in learning more about William Davis and his daughter Elizabeth and her husband Thomas, you can find a great article from the Hamilton Branch of the UEL.

The Digernes farm

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A relative sent me a copy of the Stord bygdebok. A bygdebok is a book that gives the local and historical information about a specific geographic area, in this case Stord. For more on bygdeboks see Martin Roe’s post. This particular book, written in 1973, has information on the history of the Digernes farm.

Digernes farm #2 timeline

I had a cousin who can read Norwegian much better than me translate for me. The information given in the book is displayed here.

Some fascinating history of the farm starting with it being plundered by the Scots in 1667.

Of the two farms that were created, Digernes number two is the one that was held by my family.

Up until the early part of the last century, Norwegians had three names. The first name was their given name, such as Ernest or Carl.

The second name was the patronymic name identifying the father. If Carl was the father of Ernest, then the patronymic name for Ernest would be Carlsen or Carlson, and if Carl had a daughter his daughter’s patronymic name would be Carlsdatter or Carlsdotter.

The third name was the name of the farm, in this case Digernes.

When my family moved to the US in the late 1880s and then to Canada, some kept the patronymic name, some kept the farm name, and Digernes eventually evolved to Degerness for my familial line.

It should be apparent that if we moved in the 1880s we are not the branch of the family that kept working on the farm.

In order to explore how we were related to the current owners (as of the writing of the bygdebok), I created this descendant chart.

Digernes farm family tree

So, Clifford Degerness is third cousins to the owners that were there at time of writing. Pretty cool that the farm is still in the family, even if it is getting to be shirt-tail relations.

How close are Ancestry’s latest DNA Estimates

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There is always much discussion when Ancestry, or any of the providers, provides or updates their estimates. Ancestry just updated their estimates this month and many people are wondering why they changed.

Every company providing DNA results will have slightly different results. So you are unlikely to get exactly the same results from Ancestry, MyHeritage, 23andMe and FTDNA. That’s because they all use algorithms and probability and statistics to compare my, or your, DNA to their reference sample. As the companies get larger reference samples and DNA science continues to improved, our DNA estimates should get more accurate.

DNA Country of Birth completed at DNAPainter.com

So did they?

Genealogically, on paper, my ancestry looks like this:

25% Norway
25% Sweden
12.5% Irish
18.75% English
6.25% Northern Ireland
6.25% Scotland
6.25% Unknown

So lets see how close the latest update from Ancestry on ethnicity estimates comes. At first glance, it is from the right regions, but not close to the genealogical paper trail:

42% Norway
37% Sweden and Denmark
13% England & Northwestern Europe
6% Scotland
2% Ireland

Ancestry DNA Estimates

But, clicking on the estimate for each one, Ancestry provides their range:

Norway 11 – 43%, so my 25% falls within that range
Sweden 7 – 37%, so again we are within the range
England and Norther Europe 0 – 37%, yes again
Scotland 0 – 20%, yup that works
Ireland 0 – 17%, yes that also works

Ancestry includes Northern Ireland in their range for both Scotland and Ireland, so it is difficult to tell where it should be matched, but given the numbers here, I am thinking on the Scotland side.

The estimates are still correct in that they did not bring in any other areas. I am not Asian or Egyptian or African, etc.

Where Ancestry did do very well is the DNA Communities. Their comparisons indicate that my ancestors in Norway came from Hordaland, Sunnhorland and Upper Telemark & Vestfold. Since my research indicates Hordaland and Telemark, I would agree with Ancestry’s estimate. Ancestry also includes the Halland region in my Swedish ancestry, which is again correct.

Southern Ontario Settlers Region via Ancestry

Ancestry also has “Southern Ontario Settlers” as a community. This is correctly where the Scottish, Northern Irish and some of the English eventually settled after coming to Canada and it covers a sufficiently wide area of upper Canada to include the Quebec area where many of them first settled after arriving.

Upper & Lower Canada 1798

So, overall, the new estimates are correct – providing you look beyond the initial numbers provided on Ancestry’s DNA Estimates screen.

My grandmother’s mirror~A hardworking woman

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My grandmother always worked hard. She tells the story of her grandfather not believing in play, but only in hard work:

…when my grandfather was away, my uncle put us some swings just over…there for the kids to play on. But when my grandfather came back he said there is no time for playing, we’ve to got work…

My grandmother must have gotten her work ethic from him. I cannot remember many days that my grandmother was not working. Whether it was at home or at the store, she always worked and was always busy.

I always spent at least a couple of weeks staying at her house every summer and I have vivid memories of her getting ready for working at the store in the mornings.

Every day she would wind her hair into a bun and pin it all up. She would get out her mirror, which always had the bobby pins right in the little holder and she would wrap her hair up.

She must have loved the mirror, which is now one of my most treasured possessions. When it broke Aage fixed it for her using a wing nut to hold the mirror leg.

I look at the mirror and I hear my grandmother talking to me about what work was planned for the day.