Going 'dark' for awhile

I have spent many years searching for my father, who I’ve been estranged from for many years.   A few days ago I found this:

 

 

I am not going to pretend that my father and I were close, or that I am even in mourning, but I do want to understand more about who he was as a man.  For the first time, I actually have the opportunity to talk with people who knew him who can tell me what he was like, and I’ve been spending a LOT of hours doing just that.

 

To give you an example of what kind of man he was, here is an article I found about him:  https://www.postguam.com/news/local/wwii-vet-faces-eviction-difficulty-with-services/article_bfbc3016-f1d5-11e7-82b1-eb19b1affce8.html .  He was certainly one of a kind.

 

I have his affairs to clean up, and my research into his life to complete, so I will not be able to work on all things Vosper for a while, perhaps for a couple of months (he has 22 “recent” addresses!). 

 

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I have had on my plate for some time working with a Vosper descendant where the Vosper’s lived in Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire. Unfortunately, (I feel so guilty!) I have not had the time to work on figuring out how they connect.  If you are interested in taking this on while I’m busy, please get in touch, and I will put you in touch with the Tewkesbury descendant.

 

Stay well, stay safe,

 

Cousin Teri

DNA results for Brittany Warren's mother, Rebecca Howell

Good morning cousins!  Brittany shared her and her mother’s DNA results with me on Ancestry, and while she does not match any of the kits from Vosper cousins shared with me, she does have 3 matches with people with the surname VOSPER in their trees.

The first, and most interesting, is Kyle Hilgenfeld.   Kyle also matches me (9 cm) and Lesley Dawson (8 cm).   The most ancient Vosper on his tree is Thomas Vosper (1738 Tresmeer – 1830 Egloskerry), who was married to Elizabeth Adams (1743 – 1821 Lewannick).  Their son, Richard (1784-1861) married Elizabeth Nicholls (1793-1850) [ the name Nicholls is of interest to me because I once saw it mentioned as a middle name to William Vosper, but didn’t note where I saw it, and therefore took it off his name ]. 

I have this Thomas Vosper on my tree here:

This is the same Thomas shown on our cousins chart here:

I don’t show that Malcolm Lockhart, William Williams, John Elliott Vosper or Robert McAuslan have DNA tested or they would probably match him.

So, Rebecca Howell, Brittany’s mother, shows INDIRECT connections this way on the Vosper Chart, with the line through Thomas Vosper representing Kyle Hilgenfeld:

Kyles family tree, at https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/tree/156166452?cfpid=422057514021&dtid=100 looks like this:

In a bit of an off-topic, I feel I should tell you I got some really weird results on Ancestry.  When I searched for people who had the surname Vosper in their trees for Rebecca’s DNA on my PHONE, I got this result:

BUT, when I did the same results on the Ancestry PC version, it came back with no matches!  So weird!  I guess the moral of this story is, if you don’t get what you think you should on your PC, check your phone to see if you get the same results.  NOW, I just went back to test that, and it is working on my PC!  Just wasting my time….

Both Michelle Childerley and Stacey Jordan-Knox have private trees, and I have written to them asking them about their Vosper roots.  None of the rest of us match them (that I know of), only Rebecca.  If some of you manage other Vosper DNA tests, you might want to check them to see if they match Rebecca Howell.

All of this does not help us narrow down the origins of Rebecca / Brittany’s Vosper family origins.

Cousin Teri

FW: Y DNA and the Jewish connection - Part 4

There is currently a Trevosper Barn holiday house near Launceston, you can see pictures of it and other details about the Trevosper family at:   https://vospercousins.blogspot.com/search?q=trevosper

I have been able to find references to the Trevosper and Trevoseburgh line back to about 1250:

Of course, we know that the Jews were expelled from England in 1290:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edict_of_Expulsion   So, how did they survive in Cornwall through this period.  Or was Cornwall governed separately, and the Trevosper family was overlooked.  (Just recently I was reading that Cornwall views itself as a nation, perhaps they didn’t take part in the expulsion)

         

So, what does ALL this tell us.  Hmmmm.   If we accept my guesswork that Trevosper and Trevosburgh are variations of the name Vosper, it would indicate that the family was in Cornwall back quite a while.  How does that mesh with the idea of a “Jewish refugee”?  Beats me.  I think the main source of this “Jewish refugee” history is the Visitations book, which does contain many errors.  I think the lineage shown in Visitations was created some time in the 1800’s and that the person compiling it just didn’t see the Trevosper connection (No computers to do searching with then!). 

There are some literary references to the Vospers being connected to the mining industry, but they are mostly anecdotal sources (Traditions and Hearthside Stories), as opposed to, say, the History of the Borough of Liskeard and its Vicinity:

         

In the absence of any reliable historical documents, I tend to revert to the scientific DNA evidence, which points me in the direction of the Jewish haplotype.

Hope this answers all your questions!   (Or maybe it promotes more investigation into historical and DNA sources!)

Cousin Teri

FW: Y DNA and the Jewish connection - Part 3

All of this is further cast into doubt by the fact that we have found various people with the name TREVOSPER in Cornwall prior to the time of Johannes Vosper: 

In Cornwall the use of a prefix “Tre” was meant a land owner or homestead:

  

             

This is further confirmed in the following:

AND there is a legal brief that apparently confirms the transition from Trevosper to Vosper:

http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C7478454 From the National Archives of England

Our lineage from Richard Gifford is a follows:

https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/person/tree/47009625/person/24453505918/facts

FW: Y DNA and the Jewish connection - Part 3

 

 

From: Infoseeker@Gmail [mailto:infoseeker1980@gmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, May 16, 2020 10:38 AM
To: Vosper Blog for Cousins (tccallahan.vosper@blogger.com)
Subject: FW: Y DNA and the Jewish connection - Part 3

 

All of this is further cast into doubt by the fact that we have found various people with the name TREVOSPER in Cornwall prior to the time of Johannes Vosper: 

 

In Cornwall the use of a prefix “Tre” was meant a land owner or homestead:

               

This is further confirmed in the following:

 

AND there is a legal brief that apparently confirms the transition from Trevosper to Vosper:

 

http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C7478454 From the National Archives of England

 

Our lineage from Richard Gifford is a follows:

 

https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/person/tree/47009625/person/24453505918/facts

 

FW: Y DNA and the Jewish connection - Part 2

 

2.        Connections to Jewish heritage from our DNA results. 

a.       Autosomal DNA – ie, Ancestry.com, FTDNA FamilyFinder, or 23andme DNA tests

                                                               i.      When we first began doing DNA testing I downloaded many of the DNA test results and ran them through the ethnicity calculators on GEDMATCH.com.  Most of the cousins had results that showed we come as 2% - 3% Ashkenazi Jewish.  This amount does not show up on Ancestry or the other services, because it is too small.   The amount seems to be appropriate, given that the family converted prior to 1600, and ostensibly married into Christian families from that time forward, diluting the Ashkenazi markers. 

                                                             ii.      I am not sure how accurately these tests can differentiate between Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jewish heritage.  If our family originated in Eastern Europe we would most likely be of Ashkenazi background, if we came from Spain to England, I would think it would show up a Sephardic heritage.  Ethnicity is notoriously inaccurate on these testing services.

b.      Y-DNA – from FTDNA, primarily.  Cousin Robert Vosper has been tested the most vigorously, and has a type of J-Z18186, a subclade of J-M267.  Cousin Ken has also tested, and is confirmed to be J-M267.  The first letter of the Haplotype “J” indicates this is a Jewish Haplotype.

c.        HOWEVER, I received the following email from Joe Flood, of the Cornwall Project on FTDNA:

“[It is ] Not [necessarily] the case that you have shown the Vospers to be of Jewish descent. That is debatable. They were ‘something’ alright, but not necessarily Jewish, as that particular subclade of J1 has not been associated with Jews.

For example – if the founder was a Muslim shaft mining expert who converted, it might have been in his interest to say he was Jewish, as Muslims were truly reviled after the Crusades, whereas the British were at least familiar with Jews.  

 

All speculation of course. But anyway – good work.”

d.      This casts doubt on my understanding of what the “J” means.  The subclade of J-Z18186 is quite rare, and has been found in the middle portion of England and Ireland (I recall).  Here is one school of thought regarding this subclade:

                                                               i.     

                                                             ii.      Source:  https://anthrogenica.com/showthread.php?4517-J-Z18186-Haplogroup&__cf_chl_jschl_tk__=2c86d8317b0f3fd775293664251d344e90fb6bf2-1583862157-0-ActRsGZ2I4Wj_BjYkvxieUOFTJCqp5eM6eKkBTO7dGqxZ7cXH_CnXcHdqXislZgtmZgSj2RLvE9q9qIEpUJoyp0jNYjDJ6wMQ_7SWduiS1n_9CSe84x0jvOYbDNPJk10OsFRDs4230uFJ-AjoCqoGSv1kaSwxGGq5sG8nrmVUANr3dfYKcWB1p_g0ccZx-00abc3LpHiitFUIjE9cLKB_80t6cCCHvsAN8NL4q-KAb-mg2aFFa1UekUyC2xj8MH5bmAhz-ZiqUtV6OzoFjrEGP6NdxMx_3ldRk87e_8j6YqEu4Euph5S9yPaL4H7_Peh1ljZwmzEtPEEWtY9A22LlAQ

                                                            iii.      Many of cousin Robert’s matches have the Jordan or Graham surname, and Robert is a member of those Surname projects. 

                                                           iv.      The reality is that all of these are theories, that may or may not pan out.  There are a number of projects underway in various parts of the world to determine the Y-DNA types of ancient human remains, and we can only hope that at some point they will come up with some definitive answers.  Of course, Cousin Robert or some other Vosper Cousin  will have to probably do the Big Y to match up. 

                                                             v.      At some point I would like to run Joe Flood’s theory by experts on the J haplotype, and see what they think.

3.        I think that the combination of literary, autosomal, and Y-DNA results add up to a pretty conclusive theory that the family was considered Jewish at some point prior to 1600.  It is pretty interesting, historically, to me that the family came from a “Jewish refugee” in Liskeard to being Mayor and holding various politically significant jobs in Liskeard, to marrying a descendant of Rollo the Great.  I imagine a “refugee” as being someone dressed in rags and carrying a staff, but I guess he could very well have been a well-dressed man in a wagon full of prized family possessions capable of becoming an influencer in a small town.

 

 

Origins in Silesia comes from:

               

Note that the origin of “Eastern Europe (probably Silesia)” is unsourced, and I have never found another corroborating source.  Silesia is located adjacent to Germany, and had a large population of Ashkenazi Jews.  The history of the area in regard to its Jewish population is interesting, as it indicates that the Jews were persecuted and many fled.  (This is my recollection).  You can read more about it here:  https://www.ancestry.com/mediaui-viewer/collection/1030/tree/47009625/person/24454081783/media/c99ea75e-2667-432f-83ed-9989540ea64b?_phsrc=Iow1053&usePUBJs=true    

 

New Vosper Cousin - Brittany Warren

Hello, Vosper Cousins! 

I’ve popped out of my home renovation cocoon long enough to correspond with a NEW Vosper cousin who has found my tree on Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/tree/47009625/family/pedigree?cfpid=6669495099).   Her name is Brittany Warren, and she lives near Philadelphia, Pennsyslvania, USA.

What is so UNUSUAL is HOW she plugs into the Vosper tree (see cousin chart, attached).  While all the rest of us descend from Daniel Vosper (1592-1637), Brittany traces her line to “Thomas Vosper (1577-1631), son of Thomas Vosper”.  We believe the father to be the Thomas Vosper (1537-1596), who was the son of Johanes Vosper (1511-1590).

This is hard to determine, because there is no indication of the mother’s name given, so being 100% sure of WHICH Thomas Vosper is a bit tricky.  However, this Thomas (1537-1596) appears the most reasonable in terms of his age at time of birth.  You can view the Thomas Vosper that Brittany descends from on my tree at https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/person/tree/47009625/person/7032399081/facts.  It’s interesting that he married a Henwood, as many of us have that surname in our lineage as well: 

So Britanny, we may be double cousins, on the Henwood and Vosper lines.

This is Brittany’s lineage, as shown on the far right of the chart:

Brittany’s mother and Brittany have both tested on Ancestry, and have downloaded to Gedmatch, but I have not gotten details on their testing yet.  I did look for Brittany’s test on all of the Vosper cousins who have shared their DNA with me, but did not find  a match.  This is actually to be expected this many generations back.

I’m still busy with house projects, so have to run, but hope this message finds you well, happy, and safe!

Hibernating in California,

Cousin Teri