D is for DNA

Margaret's DNA test results

Of course it is!  Where would we baby boomer retirees with time to indulge in family history research be without it?

Certainly a lot worse off than my mother Freda Tucker, who had joined two local historical societies in the 1960s after the worst of her child-rearing years were behind her.  This led in turn to an interest in family history, and as soon as the word spread to her mother's large adoptive family in Victoria, she began getting requests from cousins to seek out certain records at the NSW Archives, at that time located in the centre of Sydney.

I retired from full-time work in 2002 and by 2005 began to research my family as well as my husband's Moxon family.  Fortunately, he was just as interested as I was, but still working until 2008 when we started travelling overseas.

I had a lucky start: my mother had recorded what she knew of her Kentish birth mother and her journey to a new life in Sydney prior to Freda's birth in 1912.  My mother also strongly suggested to my father that "if you must wander around the house in the middle of the night because you can't sleep, why don't you record your life memories?"  So he did.

John had an older cousin who had started researching their Moxon family history in the early 80s and wrote to all her known Moxon relations - and some she was introduced to - to find out what they knew.  Bless you, the late Dr Wendy Lou Walker whose mother was a Moxon.  She was thus able to build a large tree of distant cousins, uncles and aunts.

 Unfortunately, when she obtained their great grand-father Joshua Middleton Moxon's death certificate, she pursued the wrong line for his father.  Certainly not Wendy's fault - the witness was his housekeeper who in 1894 had identified the wrong names for both his parents. It was Joshua who had established the Moxon family we knew in Australia.  His shipping record noted the small family of three arrived via Queensland in 1867 from London.  Ultimately, Wendy was able to find that Joshua's parents were Isaac Moxon/Moakson and Sarah Middleton.  Thank you Joshua for adding your mother's maiden name to your plain baptismal name.  It probably sounded more entrepreneurial, which was of course his aim.

A more distant cousin, Edward (Ted) Moxon whom we eventually met post-retirement had also undertaken extensive research, particularly regarding later generations.  His energetic research was very helpful for John's tree.  Ted was a longtime member of The Moxon Society and his sister May Anne Fowler is currently a very enthusiastic member who enjoys contributing stories.

By 2008, building on and checking via online records, John and I were able to start adding family stories, some of which sounded fanciful.  How could we verify some of this information?

One Moxon story was intriguing.  In 1883, the large family of Joshua Middleton Moxon imploded.  He was gaoled for three months; his pregnant wife left home; John's grandfather Harry left home at 14, breaking his apprenticeship to his father; a housekeeper left with three-year-old Alfred Moxon and changed his surname; the family was mourning the death of twins the year before.

Years later, Harry found his young brother Alf at Stuart Town in the central west.  The story was handed down in two distant Moxon branches that a rat had eaten Alf's toes and that was how Harry had identified him.  However, when the large family of Moxons gathered at Stuart Town for a reunion about 2011, Alf's son, Cecil Moxon stated that his father's toes were intact and laughed off the rat story.  It is more likely that Harry recognised Alf's adoptive "mother" in Wellington, near Stuart Town, NSW.  Alf had married in 1909 as Alf Wilson.  Later his marriage certificate was changed to Moxon.

So how did we prove that Alf really was that three-year-old child who had disappeared - some saying to Wellington in New Zealand?

Through DNA of course.  My husband John and various descendants of Alf Wilson/Moxon shared strong autosomal DNA, making them second cousins, or second cousins once or twice removed.

Additionally, members of the Society in England, Australia, America, Canada and New Zealand have been generously sharing their AncestryDNA with two Moxon Society committee members in England, Graham Jagger and Philip Lord.  This allows female members of the Society and those who have female Moxons in their ancestry to contribute their DNA, not just those male Moxon members who match on their Y-DNA.  The autosomal research has been a much more recent development since about 2015 when many English and Australians were enabled to test through AncestryDNA.

As a result, the numerous Moxon and Moxham trees for which the paper trail stalled were able to be reviewed and many trees were combined.