In early 2019 I bit the bullet and had a DNA test done through Ancestry, and took advantage of a discounted 1-year subscription at the same time. A few weeks later I received my results, and began to look through my 30,000 connected trees (the number of close matches is only 300, so I started there). I found connections with the names I expected - Swadling, Barnett, Lane, Mudie - but there were several trees connected as 4th cousins which I could not make sense of. The owners of some of these trees are located in New Zealand, which was another surprise.

I spent a week going through these trees and was able to connect various names (Royal, Bills, Cook) back to common ancestors Thomas Cook and Ann Catherine Green in Majors Creek, NSW, in the mid 1800s. I can't find a marriage for Thomas and Ann, or baptisms for their four children, and Ann's death entry in 1861 has no parents listed. Despite all this, however, there is a definite connection to these trees - eleven of them and counting.

Now for the other side of the story: I have two convicts, Thomas Green and Catherine McLaughlin, who had six children in NSW between 1804 and 1816. They also didn't marry, and none of their six children were baptised - probably as Catherine was Irish Catholic and refused to be married by an Anglican priest. I have been able to trace what happened to only three of these six children - William (my gt-gt-grandfather), Mary Ann and Margaret - plus the two other children, Susannah and Martha, that Catherine had with Patrick Bambridge after Thomas died in 1815. This leaves Catherine, John and Thomas, and I have kept trying for 40 years to find these three with no success. Catherine married (as Caroline) in 1828 to Everitt Summons, and in 1840 ran away from her husband and their five children:

Sydney Herald Friday 21 August 1840 p.3
CAUTION-The Public are hereby Cautioned against giving credit to my wife, Caroline Summons, she having left her home and family in a clandestine manner, as I will not pay any debts she may contract.
EVERITT SIMMONS [sic]
Newcastle, 20th August, 1840

(this notice was repeated in April 1841)

I have looked for further traces of her (and her brothers) for years with no success, until now. It appears that my Catherine became Ann Catherine and took up with Thomas Cook, having another four children with him. One of the four died in 1888 in a mining accident, and the coroner's inquest gives his age as 46, and birthplace as Wollongong. Ann died unpleasantly in 1861, which was reported in the newspapers of the time:

Empire Sat 11 May 1861 p.3
DEATH BY BURNING. - The Braidwood Observer says:
An inquest was held at Major's Creek, on Friday, before Dr. Codrington, and a respectable jury, on view of the body of Ann Catherine Cook, of that place, who was found by their verdict to have met her death from having been accidentally burned by falling into the fire, on Thursday last. It transpired from the evidence of the husband and the daughter of the deceased and other witnesses that she lingered until Friday morning, last, from the injuries received, when she expired. On the morning of the previous day she had sent for her husband who was out at work to come in and take a glass of rum, she then being in good health. He lay down on the sofa up to one or two o'clock, when he went out, and upon his return found her sitting in the fire-place with her clothes smouldering on fire around her. He got a dish of water and threw it over her, she being insensible at the time, and subsequently got some oil to apply to the burns of the deceased, from a neighbour. No medical advice was called in, as he alleged he was not able to pay for it, and the deceased died as described. One of the witnesses deposed that the skirts of the clothes of the deceased were burnt to a cinder up to the waist. There cannot be a doubt, but that the unhappy woman was helplessly intoxicated at the time of the accident.

Of those eleven trees which connect to this Cook/Green family, four also connect to Catherine McLaughlin, my convict ancestor mentioned above, which makes it conclusive for me. The NZ connection comes about because a grand-daughter of Thomas Cook moved there and married in 1908. So for me the DNA test has been worthwhile in tracking down this one collateral ancestor, although I'm hoping her brothers may turn up one day as well. With their names being John and Thomas, I have had little success in all this time using traditional methods.

And then there's my mystery man, William Williams - he lived in Hobart in the 1850s and 1860s, but I have no place or date of birth or death for him. I really hope to find connections to him via DNA at some stage.