Big Fat Secret

How DNA testing uncovered a big fat secret in our family tree!

Eighteen months ago, when I DNA tested ten of my family members I had high hopes the DNA results would help me break down some brick walls in my family tree.   I had been researching my family history for close to 20 years at that point, and DNA testing seemed to be the next logical step.  While I did expect to find a few adoptees, I was not expecting there would be a secret exposed that would change our known family tree and ethnicity. But that is exactly what happened.

DNA testing for genealogical purposes is relatively new but it is already an important tool for genealogists.   It is a very simple process for those being tested.  You take a sample of saliva or a cheek scraping and send it off to the testing lab, and in a month or two your results are available.   They will show you a breakdown of your ethnicity estimate based on reference populations.  You are also matched with the hundreds (maybe even thousands) of people who share some of the same DNA as you.  If you are very lucky those people you match will have a family tree, you will quickly be able to see how you are connected and they will respond with friendly messages about your shared history.   If you are unlucky there will be no family tree to investigate. If you are really unlucky, even when you send carefully thought out messages of enquiry, your DNA matches will respond with silence.

Your Cousins!

To make the most of the DNA data, I shared it with my family interested in using it for their own research.   One of the people who took this opportunity was my maternal first cousin Gail Cooper-Douglas who, using her own DNA data in conjunction with her sister’s and a handful of our maternal cousins made great headway with her own family tree.  In mid-2018 she contacted me with a puzzle in our DNA, saying she’d identified many DNA matches who appeared to be from Scandinavia and wanted to know what if anything I knew about it.   As I’m Irish on my Dad’s side, I had assumed anything Nordic showing up in my DNA was probably my (yet undiscovered) Viking heritage.  If you’re Irish, you’re probably descended from some ancient Vikings, right?

Where did you come from?

Gail suggested our maternal 2x Great Grandfather may not be who we thought he was and although on paper his name was John Godfrey, in our DNA he appeared to be somebody else.  She showed me many DNA matches to New Zealand and American families with Scandinavian Ancestry and with family trees that didn’t match anything in our family tree.  Initially I was extremely sceptical.  I’ve been researching family history long enough to know you can’t accept anything at face value.   Although I couldn’t help but think what this might mean for my family.  Had we suddenly lost all our proudly held Oxfordshire heritage?  The Apothecary son of a Baker who married the granddaughter of Rev. James Williamson the Bamford Lecturer whose portrait hangs in the Queens College at Oxford, were they no longer ours?   What about the hours of research I put in to track down Mary Cowperthwaite from Westmorland? Was I researching somebody else’s family?  And we’re just right in the middle of restoring the Godfrey Family graves at Picton! What would my poor long departed Mother have thought of this desecration of her family?   This is history Maureen, sometimes you can easily misread its shape. You’ve researched a thousand family stories to find the nugget of reality in them, and you know that even at the risk of destroying somebody’s childhood memories, ‘family truth’ is occasionally at odds with the records! …please, just calm down.

Together Gail and I painstakingly went over her research looking at family trees and DNA matches however small which might lead us to an accurate conclusion. Despite that Gail’s fervent hope was I would have some other explanation, or be able to completely disprove her theory, eventually I conceded that on the balance of probability she was correct, and that she really had uncovered a big fat secret.  Our great great grandfather was probably not John Godfrey, despite what the last 170 years of paperwork and all our family stories were showing us.     After puzzling over what to do we contacted a small group of Godfrey family members who had also DNA tested and were avid family researchers.  We figured they would look at the research and maybe find reasons we were not reading this correctly.    We shared the secret with them and they went.  “Wait… does this mean? ...what about? ...But we have a Bamford Lecturer … and the grave restoration at Picton and all that…”  And nine of us shared our DNA data with each other and the resulting analysis made Gail’s theory crystal clear.

Francis Robert Godfrey
1861-1931

 The man we have always believed was the father of our great grandfather Francis Robert Godfrey b. 1861 is not John Godfrey.    I know!  I can hear you saying, “That’s rubbish Maureen!”   So… right now, you have the choice of not reading any further and sticking with our known family history, of believing the existing paper trail and our family stories as they have been told since forever, or you can read on and discover who is responsible for our Nordic genes.

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Initially Gail located many DNA matches to our maternal first cousins who appeared to originate in Finland, specifically the city of Tornio in Lapland.  By a process of elimination, she determined the matches were occurring within the descendants of our great grandparents, Francis Robert Godfrey (FRG) and Elizabeth Ann Rabone (EAR).      Further investigation revealed none of the matches were with descendants of the siblings of either FRG or EAR.    That led Gail to conclude either FRG or EAR shared only one parent with their siblings, most likely a mother.   More investigation into the ancestry of these DNA matches in New Zealand revealed a man living in Renwick at the same time as John and Phillis Godfrey, who was born in Tornio, Lapland, and whose descendants we share DNA with.  That man was Gustaf Bary, born in 1833 the illegitimate son of Magdalena Menlos, of Tornio in Lapland, and at one point he worked for John Godfrey’s brother Henry!

Even though a strong potential candidate had been identified there was still a lot of work to do to confirm what we believe to be true was a reality. We began by identifying how many descendants of Gustaf’s children matched members of our Godfrey family.   At last count there were 24 known descendants of FRG with DNA matches to all or some of the seven known descendants Gustaf Bary.  There are 11 Great Grandchildren of FRG who all match one of Gustaf Bary’s great grandsons.  We have more, and closer DNA matches with the descendants of Gustaf Bary than we do with the Great Granddaughters of Charles and Alfred Godfrey, siblings of our FRG.

Our Family Tree?

Once we had been through this process it seemed very important to then have our analysis reviewed by somebody with far more expertise in this field than we had.  We employed a Genetic Genealogist to look at our family tree and DNA and tell us what she saw.   She said, “You’re almost there”, and we just need to get some Y-DNA tests to prove the male line.  What?!  More DNA tests?!   Yes, more DNA tests, and specifically DNA tests which will track the male Y gene back through each previous generation of sons and fathers.  As many of you know it is only the Y gene which is passed from Father to son.  Girls get two X’s, one each from Mum and Dad, and boys a Y from Dad and an X from Mum.   The Y passes down almost unchanged for generations from Father to Son and so on.   Theoretically if we test a Great Grandson of FRG we have a better than good chance of connecting with men descended from this same male line which will conclusively confirm the male line is Bary rather than Godfrey.  Right now we are looking for more candidates to Y-DNA test.  We have a Godfrey male descended from FRG who has indicated his willingness to test.  If we could just find a Bary male who wants to be a part of our research we'd be overjoyed!

The shared DNA is a clear indicator of our mutual genetic makeup.

Who is this man whose DNA we have?  Gustaf Bary was born in Finland and immigrated to New Zealand in 1855.   He settled in Renwicktown where for a short time he worked as a Miller for Henry Godfrey.  Two years after he conceived a child with Phillis Godfrey he married in 1863 to Sarah Blaymires and together they had 12 children.   Gustaf Bary had a store on Uxbridge Street in Renwicktown, which is the same street were John Godfrey’s Sheepskin Tavern originally stood.  By all accounts Gustaf was a hard working and dedicated family man.   

Gustaf Bary

 This photo of Gustaf Bary from the
Blaymires Family Website

There are very few clues left behind, there are no journals to tell us what happened, and no letters explaining the truth.   What we do know is John Godfrey raised three sons with his name and there is no historical evidence to suggest he treated any of them differently from the others.  Beyond that we are unable to speculate on what occurred, and how Phillis came to be pregnant to a man who was not her husband.  We will only ever know part of the secret.  Thanks to DNA testing and the tenacious efforts of Gail Cooper-Douglas, the what, where, when and who have been figured out, the ‘how’ is probably not our business.

We recognise for many of the family of Francis Robert Godfrey who have always believed we descend from John Godfrey, the information here may be upsetting.   In a sense we have just been told we are adopted, that our father is not who we have always believed him to be.  Despite the new knowledge about our genetics, our family and our history remains unchanged and we can be justifiably proud of the Godfrey legacy.   Honesty, justice and the truth were John Godfrey's drivers, it was these strongly held values that set him on a course of influence in the early political history of New Zealand. It is appropriate that we and future generations of our family know where we came from both biologically and historically.  

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My grateful thanks to Jocelyn Delaney, Pamela Oughton, Pamela Gordon, Donna Rider, Anne McMichael, Olive Reed and Diane Kinzett for their thoughts, encouragement, and insights in our pursuit of the answers to this mystery.  Very special thanks to Gail Cooper-Douglas, without her tenacity and courageous efforts we would not ever know about this big fat secret.