Deep Frustration!

[Phoenix]

A fire in the C18th destroyed a century's worth of parish registers in Winterborne Kingston, Dorset. So my tree peeters out c 1760.

DNA matches produce half a dozen or so matches going back to Winterborne Kingston and the same period... for a quite different surname.

So I may have this surname in my past, but as I've never found wills, poor law, manorial or anything to take me back, I probably will never know how the surname relates to me.

Anyone else finding this?

[ElizabethHerts]

Are there any BTs at the record office, Phoenix?

[Phoenix]

They are very patchy, Elizabeth. No marriages and births don't give mothers' names. And I'm not helped by everyone dying before the introduction of Rose's registers. So they could have married at twenty or late thirties.

[Phoenix]

Hmm. I now realise that their common ancestor is illegitimate. So maybe I have the surname they are all looking for!