Copper & Kin Genealogy

🧬 AncestryDNA Origins Update today!

What changed? More places, more connections!

And for me, this update brought a little piece of my family history to the front. 🇩🇪

For years, I’ve had one documented German ancestor sitting in my paternal family tree. My Henrici/Henritcy family arrived in Nova Scotia in 1750, as part of the German, Swiss and French Protestant migration to Lunenburg.

My previous AncestryDNA results showed 0% Germanic Europe.

That didn’t particularly surprise me. DNA inheritance gets more random the further back you go. We inherit roughly half of our DNA from each parent, but we don’t necessarily inherit DNA from every ancestor equally, and eventually, some ancestors may leave us with little or no detectable DNA at all!

So I basically thought: Well, maybe that tiny bit of German ancestry simply didn’t make it down to me.

But today’s update changed that.

🍻 Germanic Europe: 1%🍻

Now, 1% is tiny. And an ethnicity estimate is never proof of a particular ancestor. These estimates are based on comparing your DNA to reference populations, and Ancestry can change its results as its reference data and algorithms improve.

But it’s pretty darn interesting when the DNA result lines up with a documented family story!!
My ancestor John Henrici/Henritcy is recorded as coming from Germany.
He was part of the group who arrived aboard the ship “Anne” in 1750 and settled in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia.

John married Maria Zinck in 1782.
Maria’s family also came from Germany, arriving in Nova Scotia the following year, in 1751, aboard the “Murdoch”.

So somewhere in my paternal tree, there really are German ancestors! I know a cousin who owns a brewery that will be quite happy! ☺️🍻

And after years of seeing 0%, today’s update has given me my first tiny glimpse of them in my DNA results.

Just 1%.

But for a genealogist, sometimes 1% is pretty exciting. 🧬🇩🇪

And that’s one of the things I love about DNA genealogy:
DNA doesn’t replace the records, it just gives us another piece of the puzzle!

Now I’m curious to see what other changes this update brings to my family tree!
Have you checked your update yet?

Do you ever find an ancestor in one village on one census, and then in a neighbouring village on the next, and wonder whether they actually moved?

If you’re unsure about the migration, pull up Google Maps and switch from driving directions to walking directions.

It’s a simple trick, but it can really help put historical movement into perspective. Remember that in the 1700s and 1800s, transportation was much slower and people often travelled on foot or by horse.

If your ancestor suddenly appears in a neighbouring community, check the walking distance before assuming it was a significant move.
What looks like a different place on a modern map may have been a perfectly ordinary walk for the time or it may reveal that the proposed connection doesn’t make as much sense as it first appeared.

Maps are a great way to test whether a proposed migration is plausible before treating it as evidence.

I have ancestors from Biddenden, Kent.
Working as an apprentice Butcher with his father. Then he is in the neighbouring village of Ashford, Kent, as a Butcher himself when he is 29.
It’s only a 2 hour walk between the two villages.

It’s always a good research plan to look at neighbouring villages, explore the maps and familiarize yourself with the area you are looking at for your ancestors.

Two of My Ancestors and the Portsmouth Compact
March 7 1638. Rhode Island.

Sometimes genealogy gives us a wonderful glimpse into a moment when our ancestors weren't simply living through history, they were helping to make it!

In 1638, a group of religious dissenters left Massachusetts Bay and established a new settlement on Aquidneck Island, in what became Rhode Island.
On March 7, 1638, twenty-three men signed what became known as the 'Portsmouth Compact', creating one of the first American civil documents for their new community.

Among those names are two of my own ancestors: John Sanford and Thomas Savage.

The Portsmouth Compact document is an extraordinary expression of self-government for its time, created by people who had left Massachusetts because of conflicts surrounding religious belief and authority.

John Sanford was one of the signers. He had been associated with the religious dissenters in Massachusetts and was among those who removed to Aquidneck. By May 1638 he was already participating in the affairs of the new Portsmouth settlement. He also served the colony in several important roles, including constable, lieutenant, and in 1653 became President of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations! He died in office later that year. So his time a President of the Colony was short.

Thomas Savage was another of the original signers. His name appears immediately after Edward Hutchinson Jr. on the surviving list of signatories.
Just like Sanford, Savage was part of the group of settlers who established the new community at Portsmouth following the religious and political disputes in Massachusetts.

The original document contains 23 names, including William Coddington, John Clarke, William Hutchinson, John Coggeshall, William Aspinwall, Samuel Wilbore, John Porter, John Sanford, Thomas Savage, William Dyre, Philip Sherman and others. Henry Bull signed with his mark. Four additional names appear with later erasures or strike marks, making the history of the document itself fascinating.

For me, seeing John Sanford and Thomas Savage on that document makes the history personal. These aren't simply names in a textbook or a list of colonial settlers, they are my ancestors. Standing among the founders of Portsmouth and putting their names to one of the earliest surviving agreements for civil government in Rhode Island.

Two ancestors. One historic document. Nearly four centuries of family history between their signatures and my own signature on my HOFFMA and OFFRIP applications. :)

If you are searching early New England ancestors, drop me a line and we can search together! You may be eligible to join a Founding Families Society. -Link in the comments-

🍁 GENEALOGY TIP: Métis Research Resources You May Not Know About!

If you're researching Métis ancestry in Canada, don't limit yourself to Ancestry and FamilySearch. Some incredible free Canadian resources are hiding in plain sight!

📜 Métis National Historical Online Database
Search thousands of historical Métis records and documents by name, place and date.
👉 https://www.metisnationdatabase.ca/

🏛️ Library & Archives Canada — Métis Genealogy
A fantastic guide to Métis scrip, Red River records, census material, maps and more.
👉 https://www.canada.ca/en/library-archives/collection/research-help/indigenous-history/metis-genealogy.html

📚 Gabriel Dumont Institute — Métis Museum
Historical photographs, biographies, documents, oral histories and genealogy resources.
👉 https://www.metismuseum.ca/

🗺️ Red River Lot Maps
If your ancestors lived in the Red River Settlement, these maps can help establish where families lived and who their neighbours were.

🏛️ Provincial Archives of Alberta
Don't overlook provincial archives! They contain land, church, newspaper, community and Indigenous-related records.
👉 https://www.provincialarchives.alberta.ca/

📖 GDI Métis Genealogy Research Guide
A great starting guide with books, archives, databases and research tips.
👉https://gdins.org/me/uploads/2024/08/METIS-GENEALOGICAL-RESEARCH-2024.pdf

And remember: Métis ancestors may not be identified as “Métis” in every record. Look for variations such as French, Country-born, Bois-Brûlé, Michif, or other historical descriptions.

🌿 The best genealogy isn't just finding a name — it's finding the records that connect the generations.

What Métis genealogy resource would you add? 🍁

Last night, I stumbled across something that absolutely stopped me in my tracks!!! HOT DIGGITY!!!

I found my great-grandfather Harry J, Barley’s 1st World War medals!!
Well… not physically, sadly. But I found evidence of where they were!! Which is a huge step!

For anyone outside the genealogy and military history world, that might not sound like a big deal. But trust me this is like finding a needle in a haystack… on a global scale!

My great-grandfather served as a Lieutenant in the Machine Gun Corps during the First World War. For years, no one in the family knew what had become of his medals. They weren’t passed down. They weren’t tucked away in a drawer. They had simply vanished from our family’s history.

Lately, I’ve been retracing his wartime journey. Reading war diaries, studying battalion movements, and searching through the incredible work of the Vickers Machine Gun Collection and Research Association.

I wasn’t looking for his medals.

I was simply trying to learn more about his service.

Then, hidden away in a transcription, was one short note that made my heart race:

“His medals had been offered for sale on eBay in 2012.”
K, WHAT!?!?!?🤯🤯

Just like that, I had my first real clue in years.

Because he was an officer, his service records are held separately by the War Office, and I still need to obtain them. His regiment has also been surprisingly difficult to pin down, so every tiny piece of evidence has been hard-earned.

This discovery doesn’t mean the medals are gone forever!! It means they existed. They surfaced. They left a trail.

Now my hunt begins.
Ebay does not keep old listings up! Darn it! And from 2012!
I just know they were listed and sold! 😫 They could be with any collectors, world-wide or even a private purchaser! Somewhere, those medals still exist in a private collection, a dealer’s cabinet, or another family’s display case. If they were sold once, perhaps they can be traced again.

Now I just need to email every single WW1 artifact collector on this planet!!

Here’s hoping this is the beginning of bringing a small piece of my family’s history back home!

Harry James Barley.
2nd Lieut. Duke of Cambridge’s Own, Middlesex Regmt.
Lieut. Machine Gun Corp.

Today I wanted to highlight one of James' Acadian ancestors. A reminder that on this day (July 28) in 1755, around 12,000 Acadian people were expulled from what we now call Nova Scotia.

Jean-Baptiste Pellerin (1719–1805) lived one of the most remarkable lives an Acadian could experience.
Born at Port Royal, Annapolis on August 17, 1719, he entered the world in one of North America's oldest French settlements. Just 36 years later, everything changed!

During the Grand Dérangement (the Great Expulsion), Jean-Baptiste, his wife Marie-Josèphe Bourg, and their young children were among the thousands of Acadians forcibly deported from their homes by the British. Their family was sent to Massachusetts in 1755 where they lievd in "exile".

In the 1763 census for Massachusetts, we thankfully find the family still together, Jean-Baptiste, his wife, five sons, and one daughter. Unlike so many, they had survived one of the darkest chapters in Acadian history.

In 1765, James Murray, governor of the Province of Quebec, issued a proclamation to promote immigration to the region. To attract settlers, the initiative offered new immigrants free land, a two-year exemption from taxes, and provisions to sustain them for one month upon arrival. Between 1765 and 1775, around 1,300 Acadian exiles, many arriving by boat from the New England colonies, took advantage of Murray’s offer. Upon arrival, they were often welcomed by seigneurs (landowners) who allocated land within their seigneuries.
On 8 February 1766 Jean-Baptiste appeared on a list of Acadians in Massachusetts who wished to emigrate to Canada.

They boarded the boat "Rainbow" that left Boston on 24 August 1767 and disembarked at the port of Québec City on 1 October 1767. The family settled in Saint-Genevieve-de-Bertier.

Jean-Baptiste would live to the remarkable age of 87, passing away in 1805 after witnessing French Acadia, British conquest, deportation, exile, and the rebirth of Acadian communities in Quebec.

What makes his story even more fascinating is that he was also a descendant of the Mi'kmaq woman Anne "dit Petitous" Ouestnorouest, one of the best-known Indigenous ancestors of many Acadian families. His ancestry reminds us that Acadian history is also a story of enduring relationships between French settlers and the First Nations peoples who helped shape the earliest communities. I am currently in research for "Anne dit Petitious"

Looking at his life, you can almost trace the entire Acadian experience through one man. Born in Acadia, uprooted by war, surviving exile, and ultimately helping preserve a people, a culture, and a legacy that continues more than 300 years later. Amazing to see the interconnections.
Every name on our family tree has a story! And some, like Jean-Baptiste Pellerin's, tell the story of an entire nation! Their descendants are some of Canada's most well-known metis families!

Alright-Time for me to get back to researching the ancestors who's lives bring these stories back to our life.

Fold3 and the War of 1812.

If you’re researching American ancestors, don’t overlook Fold3! I found one of my ancestors and it opened up more pathways to discover!

Their War of 1812 pension files can be absolute goldmines, often containing affidavits, family relationships, marriages, residences, and decades of personal testimony. These records can bring an ancestor’s story to life.

https://www.fold3.com/collection/war-of-1812

Researching my Canadian ancestors is a little different.

Unlike the United States, there are no individual service files for Canadian militia members from the War of 1812. Instead, Library and Archives Canada has created a searchable database of over 45,000 names drawn from surviving records, including:
• Muster rolls
• Pay lists
• Certificates of service
• Claims for losses
• Land grants
• Medal registers

It’s a fantastic resource but it isn’t a complete list, .
Many records are still scattered across archival collections rather than in one comprehensive file.
It’s when your investigative skills come into play.

Understanding where the records are, why they exist, and what has survived is vital to professional research.

Every war leaves behind a different paper trail.

Now that I have found ancestors in New England who fought for the revolution, it’s time to see if any of my own ancestors in Canada answered the call in 1812!

Digging into a direct ancestor on my paternal side who fought in the Battle of The Great Swamp Massacre during King Philip’s War. Thomas Mumford.
The battle location actually took place on his land.

In my journey’s of discovery, I have found some researchers like to use the term “fight”. Historians use massacre. It was just that. A massacre. There are many nuances to King Phillips War and very fluid situations. I can recommend “God, War & Providence” by James Warren if you’d like to read more on it.
One of the main questions is whether the Narragansett were truly preparing for war or were being attacked preemptively because the United Colonies feared they would soon join Philip. Historians still debate this.
Either way, the English no longer trusted them and they attacked the Naganasett tribe ruthlessly in December 1675.

The Mumford’s lived through it and were directly involved in one of the most pivotal conflicts in early colonial New England. It’s a reckoning to my mind. It’s history.

And the deeper I dig, the more I can appreciate just how complicated the history of colonization really is. People came seeking religious freedom, opportunity, land, survival, and power. It was a tangled and often tragic chapter in history. Not everyone coming had ill-will. Most people just wanted a better life. Freedoms they hadn’t had before. But it’s clear to most of us that survival and fear took hold in New England for some time.

It’s also truly amazing to see James’ ancestry and mine intertwined during such a turbulent time in American history.
Not only is James Métis on his paternal side, but I’ve also recently discovered he has both Abenaki and Mi’kmaq ancestors in his family history.
There are Acadians, Planters, Immigrants, Settlers, Colonizers, French, Scottish, Irish, Indigenous and everything in between, that built us both.

My research is growing into places and events rather than just individual data. familiarizing myself with everything and everyone going on at any given time in a certain place. I truly yearn for the threads of connection between us all. It’s strange but I see humanity and history as one long movie in my head.

Another neat discovery… As i built out my Mumford branch and his 2nd wife’s, Esther Tefft, I realized that Joshua Tefft, who is the first person in the American colonies executed for treason after fighting alongside the Narragansett during King Philip’s War, is her uncle. Her father’s brother.

Esther Tefft, married into the Thomas Mumford family.
The deeper you dig, the smaller history seems to become!! “It’s a small World.”

Genealogy has a way of reminding me that history isn’t simply divided into “us” and “them.” Many families today carry the stories of settlers, Indigenous peoples, soldiers, refugees, and pioneers all within the same family tree. Ours certainly does!

Everyone who came before us is a trove of discoveries.

Thomas’ life is full of wild stories and historic events. I will one day write a longer and better biography surrounding his family.

❤️Happy Canada Day. 🇨🇦

One of my favourite parts of genealogy is realizing that history isn’t just something you read, it’s your family.

Some of my ancestors were already living in what became Canada when Confederation took place in 1867. They helped settle Nova Scotia, later moved west to places like Medicine Hat, in 1888. Raised families, built businesses, farmed, and helped shape the communities we know today.

Today I’m remembering my 3rd great-grandfather, Lewis Bentick Cochran (1846–1916).

Born in Maitland, Hants County, Nova Scotia, Lewis was the eldest son of Hon. Arthur McNutt Cochran (1811–1883) and Susan Sangster Weir (1819–1897).

Arthur was a merchant, ship owner, farmer, Justice of the Peace, school commissioner, militia officer, and later served in both the Nova Scotia House of Assembly and the Legislative Council of Nova Scotia. According to The Canadian Biographical Dictionary, he was known as “a man of cheerful disposition, very cordial and friendly.”

Arthur was born in Newport, Nova Scotia, on 16 October 1811, the son of Terrance Cochran, a prominent Hants County citizen and High Sheriff, and Elizabeth Weir, whose father John Weir was a United Empire Loyalist from Rhode Island.

Lewis his son, pictured below, grew up in this remarkable family before heading west.

In 1888, he moved from Nova Scotia to the young prairie city of Medicine Hat, Alberta, where he opened L. B. Cochran Groceries, Dry Goods & Gents Furnishings.
He also served as an Immigration Agent, helping newcomers establish themselves in Western Canada during its earliest years of settlement.

It amazes me that only a few generations separate my family from the people who witnessed Confederation and helped build communities from Nova Scotia to Alberta.

Researching their lives reminds me that history is made not only by famous names, but by ordinary families who worked hard, raised children, built businesses, served their communities, and helped shape this country.
🇨🇦❤️

'Threads'
People often ask why I spend so much time
searching for names long forgotten,
turning brittle pages,
following fading ink across centuries.
The answer is simple.
I am not looking for strangers.
I am looking for the threads
that were handed to me.

When I look at my father's great-grandmother,
I don't just see a woman.
I see someone who stood as Canada took its first breath. Then I step back one more generation.
Her great-grandfather watched a new America emerge from wilderness and uncertainty.

I step back again.

Another grandfather lived through famine,
another through civil war,
another beneath the shadow of kings,
another in the age of the Tudors,
each believing their world
was the world that would always be.

Every generation inherited stories
from those who came before.
Around fires.
Across kitchen tables.
In letters folded into pockets.
On long walks home.
Parents telling children,
"This happened before you were born..."
Until one day,

they became the story.

That is what genealogy has taught me.
History is not behind us.
It is within us.
Not as a rope,
strong and unbroken,
but as thousands upon thousands of delicate threads,
woven together across time.
Each generation adds a few more,
while others slowly fade.
No single thread reaches forever.
But together,
they span millennia.

Maybe that is why I feel a kinship
with people I could never have known.
Whether it was William the Conqueror, Charlemagne,
Cleopatra,
or the countless ordinary souls
whose names have disappeared from every record,
their world shaped someone!

Who shaped someone,
who shaped someone...
until, eventually,
they shaped me!
The distance between us is not measured in years,
but in generations.

One parent.
Then another.
Then another.
A chain of lives,
of love,
of loss,
of survival.
An unbroken succession of people
who each carried the memories of those before them,
until it was their turn
to become a memory themselves.

Perhaps that is why I find such comfort
among old photographs and forgotten records.
They remind me that none of us
arrives here alone.
We are each the latest keeper
of stories far older than ourselves.
For a little while,
the threads are ours to hold.
Then, gently,
we pass them on.
🥰