I noticed recently that my sister Heidi has a match with Kenneth at MyHeritage. They have a Theory of Relativity that looks like this:
This Theory put Heidi and Kenneth at 4th cousins once removed and the connection goes back to 1765. There are no shared matches between Kenneth and Heidi that I readily recognize. Also Kenneth’s tree is managed by someone else and is private.
Kenneth’s match also is not strong:
Connecting Heidi to Kenneth by Genealogy
I would usually try to connect going from the present to the past rather than the other way round. I see that the manager of Kenneth’s tree is from the UK which is probably a good thing as the Nicholson family was from Sheffield, UK.
I see that this is the Armstrong family in 1901 in Carlisle:
This tends to confirm the Theory at the bottom (more recent) level:
Of course, the Census does not give Mary A’s maiden name. All Ancestry Trees plus a probate record identify Mary Ann as a Lawrence. I’ll just accept the two hints, but the family is still in the Region of Cumberland:
At this point, the road I want to go down is the Hannah Nicholson road, but Ancestry gives me no hints. The 1881 Census has Hannah born in Renwick:
Renwick is quite a hike from Sheffield.
Here is a marriage record from Ancestry:
Here are Hannah and her parents in 1841:
The ‘y’ in the last column indicates that everyone was born in the same county – which would be Cumbria. The connection to Sheffield is not looking good.
Pulling the Plug
At this point, the connection does not seem feasible. The John Nicholson in my tree was married to Martha Jow:
Summary and Conclusions
- I had hopes that a Theory of Relativity at MyHeritage would lead to an actual connection between my sister Heidi and Kenneth
- I checked out Kenneth’s tree and his Nicholson ancestors were in Cumbria to the North of England while mine (and Heidi’s) were in Sheffield England
- MyHeritage did have the confidence as low, and the DNA match was small