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My paternal grandmother Harriett Gillgren used to tell me intriguing stories of her father William Williams (pictured above on the left), who drove logging and gold trains on New Zealand\u2019s Coromandel Peninsula in the 1890s. <\/p>
Despite many searches, I couldn\u2019t find any details of William\u2019s birth or identity. I had few clues to work from. He married Harriett Martha McKinley in 1900, 14 years after their eldest child was born. The marriage certificate gave his mother\u2019s name as Jemima Smitheram and his father\u2019s name as William Williams, mariner. His children\u2019s birth certificates stated that he was born between 1852 and 1856, in Cornwall or Plymouth. William died in 1928 and, according to his death certificate, had arrived in New Zealand 52 years earlier.<\/p>
Family members reckoned that he was born on 1 June or 1 July, and that he was an orphan with two sisters in Cornwall. William had been a fireman in the Navy and was shipwrecked off the coast of Australia. I followed up all these leads, but drew a blank.<\/p>
There were no census or UK birth entries for him with parents Jemima and William Williams, and no marriage for the couple. So who was he?<\/p>
Jemima Smitheram is not a common name. If she was his mother, there was only one possible candidate in Cornwall or Devon. This was Jemima Smitheram, born in 1810 in Linkinhorne, near Plymouth.<\/p>
Posting on a message board in 2002, I made contact with Jean Robinson, a UK descendant of Jemima. Jean (n\u00e9e Peters) was the 3x great granddaughter of Jemima and her husband Thomas Gould Peters.<\/p>
Jemima married Thomas in 1830 and they had eight children. Thomas died in 1850, and Jemima in 1869 under the surname Peters. Despite exhaustive research, we couldn\u2019t find any evidence connecting my William to Jean\u2019s Peters family. However, all that changed in 2017 when Jean and I took DNA tests.<\/p>
I felt great elation when she emailed to say we had a chromosome match. I invited several paternal cousins to take a DNA test, too, and one matched Jean on three chromosomes.<\/p>