The Girdlestone family originated in North Norfolk but has since spread across the UK and worldwide. A well documented family arises in the late 1500s and can be traced via parish registers and wills to the famous ‘Kelling’ line, featuring many clergymen, soldiers, lawyers, explorers and medics. In 1904 two brothers from this branch published their ‘Genealogical Notes on the Girdlestone Family’.

Several other branches have also been carefully researched, but how they tie back to the original Kelling family is a little more uncertain. There are branches originating in Wramplingham, Burnham Westgate, Little Walsingham, Holt and others. Tying them together with confidence gets difficult before about 1750 — in a small area with a limited pool of first names, there are often several “John Girdlestone”s or “Robert Girdlestone”s alive at once, and working out which is which from parish records alone becomes guesswork. This project uses Y-DNA testing to settle those questions where paper records can't, and autosomal (AncestryDNA / Family Finder / MyHeritage) testing to confirm connections in more recent generations, and across female line descendants.

YDNA

We've made excellent progress on breadth. Ten men have now tested from across the traditional branches. Eight have taken the most detailed ‘BigY700’ test, which has proven all eight share a common male-line ancestor who lived around 1600, which lines up well with what we know of the original Girdlestones of Kelling. It is great to finally prove what we long suspected – that all Girdlestones appear to be descended from the same family.

We have also identified YDNA markers relating to two of branches of the family – Kings Lynn (c1700) and a more recent Little Walsingham branch dating from around 1900.

Having established that breadth, what we need now is depth, in order to learn how the earlier generations of the family spread, in the 17^th and 18^th Centuries. For this we are looking for more volunteers from each of the branches to take a free test.

Autosomal DNA

For those who have already taken an ‘autosomal DNA’ test (like AncestryDNA or Family Finder) which looks at all DNA, not specifically YDNA, Dave is piecing together the links across branches and building a matrix to help new testers find their branch.

You can transfer your raw results from other companies to this FamilyTreeDNA project and compare to the others in the project. This is particularly useful for those Girdlestone descendants via the female line who don’t share the YDNA. With a confirmed DNA match to a YDNA tester, you can then have confidence your Girdlestones match the early YDNA tree.

Now that FamilyTreeDNA has moved to Next-Generation Sequencing for their ‘Family Finder’ autosomal test, we are hoping to see more precise results and perhaps more clues on our origins.

Ancient Origins

The YDNA results also give us a fascinating window into how our male-line ancestors came to be in North Norfolk around 1600 in the first place — all the way back through the original human migrations out of Africa.

How we can help

If you'd like to learn more about our results, or are interested in taking a test yourself, please get in touch. The project holds a general fund, built from donations by admins and our testers, which we use to cover the cost of testing for people from branches that stand to tell us the most about how the 17th- and 18th-century Girdlestones relate to each other.

Thanks to everyone who has taken part — We'll keep this page updated as we learn more.

Chris Girdlestone, Bristol, UK   c.girdlestone337@googlemail.com

David Addy, Norfolk, UK.