Look where the paper trail leads to..........

It's inevitable that delving into family trees is going to turn up some long-term connections. So many people are doing DNA tests to find a birth father or mother but how many people are able to say they are distantly related just reconnecting on the tree?

Recently I was updating my uncle on our connections to some famous early Australian settlers. They were David and Sophia Allan originally from Scotland. Sophia Allan nee Johnson was my 3x great grandmother Matilda's sister. The family of Allans were early settlers in NSW and Victoria. David was a very important Deputy Commissariat for the Colony at the time of Macquarie. David and one of the sons got a couple of large land grants in the Illawarra. I can see them from my place!

Too short for a selfie shot really

Bill, my uncle, is proud of the family history discoveries I make but is not really that interested. On this particular day I asked him how his stepson, Greg, spelt his name Allan. Was it AN or EN? He elaborated on Greg’s father and grandfather and curiosity caught me- was there a chance he was  related to our Allans? I went from there googling and Ancestry stalking the family and until I traced my step cousin and family back to the 1800s to one David Hendry Allan b 1800 Edinburgh. Lo and behold his mother and father were the same Sophia and David Allan.

I DIDN’T REALLY MEAN TO SPEND ALL AFTERNOON ON FAMILY HISTORY BUT I THINK I'VE FINALLY GOT A BINGO!

During the Macquarie era, in 1813, David arrived in the Colony with his parents & siblings having first been brought up in the British outpost of Heglioland. After returning to England and Scotland in 1819  with  his parents David Jr stayed in Edinburgh after his father’s return to Sydney and later moved to England. He married Henrietta Ann McGillivray in 1821 and had the following children :

1. LEWIS MCGILLIVRAY ALLAN born on 07 Jan 1822 in Edinburgh.
2. SOPHIA JOHNSTONE ALLAN born on 24 Jun 1824 in Edinburgh.
3. ANDREW GEORGE ALLAN born on 06 Mar 1829 in Edinburgh.
4. WILLIAM HENRY ALLAN born on 10 Apr 1831 in Edinburgh.
5. ELIZABETH MARGARET ALLAN born 1833
6. GEORGE ERSKINE ALLAN born about 1836 in Cumberland, England.

David Hendrie Allan’ son,  Lewis MCGillivray Allan was a mariner who ended up in NSW Australia. He married Lucy Benson in 1855 in Sydney. They had a son David Hendrie Allan (2)was born 1863 in Muswellbrook.  His son David Clive Allan had Ashton Clive Allan who had Gregory Clive Allan (my step cousin).

So Greg, besides being my step cousin is my 5th cousin 1x removed.   His sons, Alexander and Jeremy are my 5th cousins. Welcome to the family (again).

Bill and his step grandsons

Greg’s excited response was “Great to hear from you.....Wow, Wow and Wow is all I can say. That is so surreal...what a very small world it is.”

Greg and Bill nutting things out. As it turns out they are 4th cousins.

 So I rang my uncle to tell him the good news. Finally, I impressed my Uncle Bill with my research. He was quite chuffed that the boy he had so much love and admiration for had his DNA and was also his 4th cousin.

At a recent family get together Greg told his family and step sister Lyn (r) of the discovery.