While The Cat’s Away This Hound Will Play

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For the next couple of days;  my husband has gone on a fishing trip with my brother’s and my father. So while they are hoping to catch fish I’m hoping that I’ll bag a brick wall.  I’m going to do that by going through all my bits and pieces of Beaton papers and I’m going to work on my DNA kits till all hours of the day and night.

Over the past few years I’ve had various people related to the Beaton family do a DNA kit.  Before my mom pasted away, she did a kit, I’ve done one on myself, my cousin Rick, my two uncle’s; Ken and Dick , Margaret who is a descendant of my great-grandfather; William (Willie) Beaton’s sister;  Annie and Mary who is a descendant of the Beaton family.

If you’ve heard the Beaton/Batten story then you can leave for a moment and grab a beverage.  But for those of you who don’t know the story then you need to know that my great-grandfather; William Beaton was adopted by his father  but the lady who raised him wasn’t his mother. Or so the family story goes. Another version from one of my aunt’s is that Willie’s mom abandoned him and then his father abandoned him as well. So I’m not sure if the family, I found Willie in, in the 1881 census,  really is his family. I’ve  spent many hours and four weeks in Kingston trying to find orphan records or something that would explain the story.

Willie’s sister; Annie was adopted by the Batten family. She lived with that family just down the way from the Beaton’s.  I know, similar name…. but I can’t find a connection between the two families other than they adopted my family.

So are they orphans, are they home children…. who’s children are they?

Ok for those of you who left to get a drink, we continue.

So I tested Mary; who is a descendant of the Beaton family (that Willie was raised by)  and she wasn’t a match to my mom as a second cousin. I know that doesn’t prove without a doubt that we aren’t from the family but I haven’t been able to get another descendant to test yet.

I tested Margaret; a descendant of Annie Batten and she was a second cousin match to my mom.

I’ve put all these kits onto Gedmatch which is a third-party site that provides additional reports on your DNA.  This is great, because you can see anyone who’s loaded their kits from Family Tree DNA, Ancestry and 23andMe. I’ve paid a donation, so I’m a 1st Tier member. 1st Tier gives you additional reports.

Now for the fun… I found a new site called DNA Gedcom and I’m loading my info so I can see what I can triangulate. Triangulation is described by the ISOGG as,  the technique used in autosomal DNA testing to compare matching DNA segments to determine which ancestor donated which particular segment.

So I’m doing that today and I hope I will have something major to tell you about in the next few days.. crossing fingers.