I describe myself as an amateur genealogist, digging up my deceased ancestors and relatives, and bringing them back to life!

I am currently researching my family tree and putting the results on here on Geni. Once a month I download the updated GEDCOM file to import into Webtrees and analyse the data using WordPress. This allows me to list the entire tree with filters, e.g. those who may have served in WW1, when fold3 records are freely available. I then use my own Web Application to retrieve and format the data.

Current genealogy aims:

• Research and build family tree out to approximately 5th to 6th cousins (likely limit of DNA verification); up to approximately 10th great-grandparents (for the documented Hill and Carr families)
• Obtain digital copies of "the paper trail" or links to where original documents can be sourced (birth, baptism, marriage, census, death etc.) Note: such links may be behind paywalls
• Transcribe relevant sections of all source material, into modern, readable and machine readable formats
• Discover family history stories e.g. via newspapers, contacting relatives...
• Verify relationships via thorough DNA research - willing to fund known relatives to take Autosomal DNA test on Ancestry
• Research distant DNA lines through Y-DNA tests (ideally Big Y-700 for Thomson, Pearson, Macleod, Hill, Carr, Raine)
• Try to write more Wikipedia style reports for those in my extended tree, or create actual Wikipedia entries for those who are sufficiently note-worthy.
• Contacting known DNA relatives to cooperate on genealogy research and share documents
• Publishing on archive.org The History of The Family of Carr of Woodhall, Lesbury, Eshott, and Hetton Volume 3 by Ralph Edward Carr, Cuthbert Ellison Carr, and the Rev. T.W. Carr, M.A. 2nd Edition created by Reggie Thomson Published 2023
• Researching my grandfather's World War 1 war diaries (RAMC) including transcriptions, locations, other people mentioned, with a view to perhaps someday visiting the key places; publishing on archive.org
• Developing my Browser extension program for:
  • Efficient data scraping from many websites - nothing sinister - e.g. from Wikipedia, getting addresses and locations Crail Parish Church, 5 Marketgate, Crail, Fife KY10 3TH 56.26271, -2.62556 - where I was baptised
  • Data formatting - putting the data in the correct format for inclusion in Geni About page
  • Data processing - it's very useful to have a textbox on a web page for copying, pasting and editing
  • Web page layout re-formatting - so my version of Geni has a sidebar with links to newspapers, ancestry, MyHeritage, Google, Scotlandspeople, etc. and also ensures that the buttons for Edit page or Profile are accessible even when scrolling to the bottom.
  • Highlighting obsolete links in Geni about so they can be quickly updated
• Continue to develop my WordPress program for:
  • displaying and interpreting my personal family tree,
  • listing events that happened on a particular day of the year in chronological order
  • limiting my research only to members of my extended tree
  • creating a searchable database for all documents, to possibly also include inherited objects
  • ensuring efficient text searchability
  • creating location maps for Google maps and Google Earth, for use when visiting locations
  • automatic Leeds Method sorting of DNA data, currently just from Ancestry, but ideally from all sources
  • blogging interesting stories
  • creating a calendar of significant anniversaries - e.g. 150th anniversary of the death of Dr Stephen Lushington on 19 January 1873; 150th anniversary of founding of the Rio Tinto (corporation) and appointment of Mark William Carr as its general manager
  • correcting and standardising information and deleting spurious incorrect individuals
• Visiting ancestral locations for further research, especially London, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Whitby, Hartlepool, Newcastle, Greenock, Inverness, Lairg, Helmsdale, Latheron, Ardentinny, Rio Tinto in Spain

Notes:

1. I follow Geni conventions for Birth surnames – Geni Help Center - filling in the "Birth Surname" for males and females, and putting "Last Name" to the last married surname for married females, except where there is documented evidence that the individual always referred to herself by her maiden surname even after marriage. Please change your Account Settings - Name Preferences if you wish to view everyone by their birth surname.
2. I dislike abbreviations, e.g. I will use Lieutenant Colonel instead of Lt-Col, Lt.-Col., Lieut-Col, Lieut.-Col. etc. (but I love irony...)
3. I put all dates in the format "Friday, 29 October 2021" (sometimes leaving out "Friday") - except for dates before 1752, which allows me to easily discover all relatives with events on a particular day of the year. It also means I can highlight any dates on a geni page and add a red label showing how many years ago the event happened.
4. Locations in a standard format e.g. Churchill College, Storey's Way, Cambridge CB3 0DS 52.213, 0.101 which I attended from 4 October 1981 to 30 June 1984, which allows me to create a kml Google map of places of interest to visit. Note: I include the county or historical county (unless the city/town has the same name as the county) and postcodes (because most GPS devices use them) and usually ignore the nearest large postal town (now part of the postal address, but it can give the wrong impression that the location is within that town/city). For large metropolitan areas I often include the district and ignore the old county (so "18 Eaton Place, Middlesex" becomes "18 Eaton Place, Belgravia, London SW1X 8AE").
5. All links to Scotland's People are now broken - it is no longer possible to directly verify the research, which is a shame.
6. I currently have subscriptions to Ancestry (United Kingdom only), MyHeritage, and British Newspaper Archives.

Other interests:

• Member of the XS Latin formation dance team 52.2226633, -0.0861808 from 8 January 2015 to 7 December 2019
• Competed for England in the XSLatin Planets team WDSF World Formation Latin Championships at Multiversum Schwechat Arena, Vienna 48.1416388, 16.4814587 on 9 December 2017
• Competed for England at the European Championships at Kalisz Arena Sports Hall, Poland 51.7491667,18.0508333 on 9 June 2018
• Currently learning Scottish Country Dancing in Cambridge, England

Y-DNA

My Y-DNA haplogroup is now R-FTA92644. A haplogroup represents a single male ancestor in whom a single nucleotide genetic change (called an SNP) has occurred. This change is then passed down to all male descendants of that person. Typically, a single nucleotide genetic change happens once every 83 years (approximately once every three generations). With sufficient testers, and a known genealogy tree, it can be possible to pinpoint exactly which individual was the progenitor of the haplogroup. Currently, only two people (my brother and I) are known to have the R-FTA92644.

The FamilyTreeDNA Time to Most Recent Common Ancestor (TMRCA) estimate appears to be fairly accurate - and gives an estimated date of 1940 for the birth of the person in whom the haplogroup first occurred. That seems to fit well with it being my father. For the moment I will refer to this man as "Mr R-FTA92644" (in case he's my grandfather or great-grandfather). I will need to get a close male relative, possibly a cousin or second cousin to take the Y-700 test to be sure of this hypothesis.

The Time Tree on FamilyTreeDNA now gives a great visual of this tree. On the Block Tree (which isn't available to show here) there are now 4 Equivalent SNPs on R-FTA92644 and a further 9 Equivalents on R-FTA92526. The Time to Most Recent Common Ancestor of R-FT159781 puts "Mr R-FT159781" being born around 829 CE, but there's quite a bit of uncertainty about this date. There's also a migration map for R-FTA92644.

NOTE: only FamilyTreeDNA offer the Y-700 test, and to get the most genealogical benefit from it, you need to test three people (called "The rule of three") - preferably two close males and one more distant known cousin/uncle.

Finally, R-MC21 descends from R-DF41 and you can see a very large tree, including the Royal Stewart line on The Big Tree: R-DF41

Places I have lived in

• [Sypsies Farmhouse, Crail, Fife KY10 3XA 56.2626195, -2.6415066] to Monday, 24 May 1965
• [Drumdoch Farm, Lochans, Dumfries and Galloway DG9 8NW 54.8744537, -4.9688838] from Monday, 24 May 1965 to Thursday, 7 October 1965
• [Liddesdale House, Stranraer, Dumfries and Galloway DG9 0LB 54.9068628, -5.0414787] from Friday, 8 October 1965 to Tuesday, 9 May 1967
• [Caw House, Clooney Road, Londonderry, Northern Ireland BT47 6TG 55.0084519, -7.2775667] from Thursday, 11 May 1967 to Monday, 28 August 1967
• [Glendarragh House, 43 Letterkenny Road, Londonderry, Northern Ireland BT48 8XG 54.9766919, -7.3676994] from Tuesday, 29 August 1967 to July 1970
• [Larchmount House, 66 Ardmore Road, Ardmore, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland BT47 3QZ 54.9649849, -7.2658785] from July 1970 to Monday, 23 August 1976
• [11 Magheralave Park East, Lisburn, County Antrim, Northern Ireland BT28 3BT 54.5207416, -6.0452062] from Tuesday, 24 August 1976 to June 1980