Tag Archives: gillespie

Tuesday’s Tip: Public Profiler Worldnames

OK, I don’t know if this is going to break down any of your brick walls, but if you are like me, it was fun to play with.

I started on Public Profiler Worldnames and entered my maiden name Gillespie.

This is the distribution of the name across the world.  Well at least in the countries they are tracking. Below the map, I discover there are more Gillespie’s per million in Ireland in any other country.


So I click on Ireland in the map and see that they are concentrated in North Ireland and Scotland. This fits with my belief that they are from the Ulster Scots or Scotch Irish.

Clicking again on the dark blue area, I see:

Now I don’t think this helps me in my genealogy research all that much. This tells me where the names are most likely to come from, not where my ancestors come from.  But I love maps.  So what the heck — it was fun! 🙂

Treasure Chest Thursday: Let’s Talk DNA

You get out of the habit, and it’s easy to stay out of the habit of not posting.  Let’s see if I can work on better habits. 🙂

I received my DNA results back from Ancestry.com (full disclosure, I am an employee).

I was expecting Scottish and German.  Here is what I have:

Every line I’ve been able to track, both paternal and maternal go back to the 1700’s and I’ve yet to find a document that gives me proof of jumping the Atlantic.  But given names and other genealogies I’ve seen, I’m pretty sure that there are a ton of Scottish or Ulster Scots in my tree.  So that 69% British Isle feels right.

And yes, I’ve got what many have referred to as the “Scandinavian Surprise.” But the Scandinavians many centuries ago spent a good deal of time wandering the British Isles and shall we say, left some of themselves behind.

I have a lot of of what I believe to be German names in my tree.  Feazell, Baxter, Snavely (which may be Swiss).  I suspect they are the Eastern European. I would have guessed more than 17%, but guessing and being are two different things.

Not a lot of “What the heck?” in there.

I’ve also been able to match through trees of mine and others possible connections to my Mary Gillespie branch. I believe that her father was Willis Gillespie but it is all indirect evidence and sort of weak at that.  If that connection is true, then I have Smith’s from Amherst in my line, and I found two trees where that is the only overlap.  Now I know that doesn’t prove anything.  But it is a clue.  And I’ll take a clue I didn’t have any day of the week.  It does make me want to hunt harder for that evidence or at least work harder to put it together.

But that is all in the background at the moment.  CG work calls.