Finding Dedemiah: Tracing the life of a great-great-great grandmother through documents and DNA

When I became interested in genealogy research, my purpose was to chart the ancestry of my children. Thus, I have enjoyed learning about my wife's family background as well as my own. I am grateful for the work that my father-in-law, Peter W. Gilderson, has done on his forebears, as it laid the foundation for my own research. Any genealogy hobbyist knows the joy of the "the hunt," and that there is always another fact to track down or mystery to solve. One mystery in Peter's family tree was the identity of his great-great grandmother, Dedemiah, whose married surname was Bull, but whose birth surname was not known by him.

Peter Gilderson's family tree at the time I started researching in 2015

In my first try at researching the Bull family, I found information that hinted at fascinating stories of love, loss and struggle -- but I could not find Dedemiah. Particularly, I could not find anything about her origins or birth name. Imagine how many ways the rare given name "Dedemiah" might be mis-spelled in document indexes and transcriptions. Eventually, I found baptismal records for two girls with that name, born close to 1800 in the county of Sussex, which lies just to the south of London -- Dedemiah Driver, baptized in Brighton in 1805, and Dedemiah Allen, baptized in Withyham in 1804. But I could not find any document that would point strongly toward one or the other as the primary candidate to be my wife Caroline's great-great-great grandmother. I was at what genealogists call a "brick wall" in my research, so I moved on to something else.

I came back to this mystery in 2018, looking again for evidence that would reveal Dedemiah's surname and origins.The first clue came from the 1881 English Census for Barkingside, Essex (now part of London).

Now, there is no place in Sussex called "Wetham," but there is a village called "Withyham." This was the first piece of evidence that pointed toward Dedemiah Allen.

The second piece of evidence I found was that Thomas BULL married Didyma Allen in Tudely, Kent, England, on September 2, 1822. Tudely is northeast of Royal Tunbridge Wells, in Kent, and about ten miles from Withyham. It is about five miles from Speldhurst, Kent, where Thomas Bull was baptized on August 9, 1796. I was beginning to feel confident enough about Dedemiah's origins to type "Allen" into her surname space on my family tree.

The final piece of evidence came from a source that has only recently become easily available to family history researchers -- DNA testing. In 2017 and 2018, Caroline and her parents took autosomal DNA tests through Ancestry.com. The test results provide information about where in the world one's ancestors likely came from. Of more interest to the genealogist, Ancestry.com also provides a list of other DNA testers who may share common ancestors. When those DNA matches have also built family trees, it is sometimes possible to discover the links and to trace the generations back to common ancestors.

My father-in-law Peter's list of matches included a person in southern England who shares an amount of DNA with him that indicates a possibility of being distant (5th to 8th) cousins. Two people who are 5th cousins share great-great-great-great grandparents in common. Peter's DNA match has created an extensive family tree that shows they may be 5th cousins, sharing an Allen ancestor. I write that they MAY share an Allen ancestor because I have recently read a blog post titled Confirmation Bias in Genetic Genealogy: Beware! on the Who Are You Made Of? blog, which cautions against making premature conclusions about common ancestry from DNA matches. 

Whether Peter and his DNA match do indeed share a common ancestor, it seems to me that the documents, supplemented by DNA, point to Caroline's 3X great grandmother having been born Dedemiah Allen. This conclusion has led to the discovery of more information about the lives of Dedemiah and Thomas Bull, and of the Bull family of Speldhurst, Kent.

Sources:

1. Ancestry.com and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 1881 England Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2004.
Class: RG11; Piece: 1746; Folio: 53; Page: 29; GSU roll: 1341420

2. Confirmation Bias in Genetic Genealogy: Beware! 
https://whoareyoumadeof.com/blog/2018/08/27/confirmation-bias-in-genetic-genealogy-beware/  Posted 27 AUG 2018; Accessed 15 MAY 2020