Growing up, I only knew one grandparent, my mum’s mum, Eunice Baverstock. Mum’s dad had died suddenly of a brain hemorrhage when he was only 31, and I didn’t know anything about my dad’s parents because I had no contact with him.​​ While I at least knew my dad’s name, it always intrigued me that my grandmother didn’t even know who her dad was.​​ 

Eunice’s life began in the household of Percy Baverstock and Margaret Baverstock (nee Knapp) at 27 Glebe St, Alberton (Trove). Percy was previously married to Ellen Moore with whom he had 4 children, including Hazel Baverstock, before Ellen’s passing in 1919.​​ 

Eunice was raised within the Baverstock family to believe she was one of Margaret’s daughters and that Hazel was her half-sister. However, in reality Hazel Baverstock was only 17 years old when she became pregnant with Eunice in 1931, with the family covering up the scandal by claiming Eunice was Margaret’s child.​​ 

After Margaret passed away in 1937, Eunice was listed as one of her children in the one-year memoriam notice in​​ The Advertiser:​​ 

The Advertiser, 2 March 1938 (Trove)

On 25 March 1938, Hazel married Keith Rose and Eunice had moved with them, as indicated by the 2-year memoriam notice for Margaret published by Hazel placing Eunice in their household. But it wouldn’t been until years later that she discovered the truth of her parenthood.​​ 

The Advertiser, 2 March 1939 (Trove) 

The only detail I knew about Eunice’s father was that he also lived in the Port Adelaide area, leaving a sizable gap in her family tree:

Eunice Baverstock known family tree prior to DNA research

Solving the​​ puzzle with DNA

I had been vaguely aware of internet DNA testing for a long time before discussing it with my friend Nathan Richards when I visited him in the USA in 2018. It wasn’t until 2020 in the doldrums of COVID lockdown that I remembered this chat and thought it might be a good idea to understand the genetics of my health, and find an excuse for my tone-deafness.​​ 

$129.99 well-spent

I had no idea about the use of DNA as a genealogical tool, but after getting the DNA file from that test I​​ discovered I could load it to other services for more analysis. Other than a range of dubious health-related sites, one of the sites was MyHeritage and I was shocked by all the DNA matches and interested in the possibilities for filling gaps in my family tree.​​ 

Because my mum and dad had separated under acrimonious circumstances when I was so young, some had doubts about my own paternity. It was great to use that resource to find DNA matches with close cousins from his family tree and reassure myself (not that my mum herself ever expressed any doubt) that he was indeed my dad.​​ 

When I was 21, I visited​​ England to meet my​​ dad’s brother,​​ Tony Edmonds,​​ and he gave me an Edmonds family tree going back a few generations. This was a​​ small​​ consolation for not being permitted to meet​​ my paternal grandparents​​ while I was there. Armed with this, a few generations of my mum’s dad’s dad’s (Keenan) side, and my own research into mum’s dad’s mum’s (Bertram) side, I felt naively confident I could identify unfamiliar surnames in Australia and narrow down the options for Eunice’s dad. ​​ 

My known family tree prior to DNA research

MyHeritage has some useful clustering tools to group shared relatives, but despite a number of Australian DNA relatives on MyHeritage and the likelihood that a quarter of these were related to me via Eunice’s unknown father, the lack of any surnames to match from his line made it very challenging to identify which clusters were related to him.​​ 

The fact is that we have thousands of fourth to fifth generation relatives, with thousands of​​ different surnames, so it is difficult to even exclude known surnames from other tree branches, let alone search for an unknown name. On MyHeritage alone, there are 8432 different surnames in my DNA matches, contained in the title image of this page. Ironically, not one of them is the surname it turned out I was looking for!​​ 

When I caught up again with Nathan in early 2023, I thanked him for his original recommendation to do the DNA test and he suggested I also try the Ancestry.com one as well because it has even more features.​​ 

The most powerful aspect of the Ancestry DNA testing unlike the 23andme test, is that it sorts relatives into maternal and paternal groupings, providing an immediate filter for investigating relationships.​​ 

Ancestry.com strongest​​ DNA matches by maternal line

There are two features of Ancestry that make analysis very powerful in establishing the likely source of the DNA connection:

• The integration of family trees, where users allow them to be visible, which allows browsing of surnames to identify common ones from one’s own tree.​​ 

• The inclusion of a shared matches tool in the results also provides the opportunity to identify known surnames from one’s own tree.

Of my closest DNA matches on the maternal line, I knew Leonie was related to me through Hazel (her grandmother, my g-grandmother). Maureen was​​ a mystery but unlinked tree didn’t allow investigation. Dawn doesn’t have a shared tree, but by browsing our shared DNA relatives it was possible to identify her as a Bertram, related via​​ my maternal grandfather’s mother’s line:

David Hall, I knew was also related to me through Hazel (also his g-great grandmother).​​ 

Which left the first of the “extended” family (but still strong) matches, “muzlen”, a 199cM match, which according to the DNA Painter tool, suggested the most likely “half” relationship was half 1st​​ cousin once removed, that is sharing a single grandparent/great-grandparent respectively:

​​ The Shared cM Project 4.0 tool v4

Muzlen was also a common relative of my second-strongest match, Maureen Watkins, making this a very positive line of investigation.​​ 

One of the quirks of Ancestry is that it provides very limited information to non-paying users. Viewing other people’s family trees is limited to what happens to fit on the screen, so if surnames are cut off then there are no means for further investigation. From Muzlen’s tree I could see there were two potential candidates for our DNA match and therefore Eunice’s father, whose surnames could only be made out by following their antecedents:

• Leonard George Watkins

• George Meavious Vi? Pedler

Free view of​​ Ancestry.com family tree of “muzlen”

Leonard (b. 1888) was much older than Hazel (b. 1914) but still clearly virile, having a son in 1933. By finding his​​ record on familysearch.org​​ I was able to rule him out because he spent his entire life in NSW.​​ 

That left only George Meavious Vi*? Pedler (b. 1910, four years older than Hazel). Looking back through his family tree, his grandmother had a “Vivian” surname, so I searched and found the familysearch.org record for​​ George Meavious Vivian Pedler. And sure enough, the key locations were a match: born in Port Adelaide and married in 1934, 3 years after Eunice’s birth, to Lillian Merle Connolly in Port Adelaide.​​ 

From this, it seemed very likely that muzlen was the grand-daughter of George Meavious Vivian Pedler and that he​​ was Eunice’s father, my great-grandfather. I contacted muzlen through the Ancestry messaging feature and was grateful when she replied very quickly, introducing herself to be Jo Edwards (nee Pedler). I sent through some details and a photo of Eunice and Jo​​ confirmed that her mother and sisters all agreed that George was Eunice’s father.​​ 

Keenan family relationship to the Pedler family, generated with DNAPainter.com shared DNA with Ben

Jo generously provided some information about the Pedler family and George MV himself.​​ 

Who was George Meavious Vivian Pedler?

George was raised in Port Adelaide before joining the Navy and serving during World War II.​​ 

George was on the HMAS Canberra when it was hit by torpedoes and sunk in 1942. At the Australian War Memorial there is a model of the ship and a video that plays of what happened as reenactment via a recorded person giving the account. There is also a​​ monument​​ by the Carillon commemorating this incident.​​ 

Only a few years after surviving this, in 1947, he died at the age of 37 in a motorcycle accident in Sydney, where his family had moved to support his naval posting.

The Advertiser, Wednesday 9 July 1947 (Trove)

George’s grandfather George Meavious was the first of our line of Pedlers to migrate to Australia from England.​​ He was born in​​ Meavy, Devon (hence the “Meavious” middle name he shared with his grandson), and settled in South Australia. George senior was also in the Navy as was his​​ father, John Pedler who was in the​​ Battle of the Nile​​ and the​​ Battle of Copenhagen.​​ 

There is no doubting the family resemblance between George and Eunice:

​​ 

​​ Eunice’s (more complete) family tree

Postscript

As a child, I had a very small family and knew nothing of my family history beyond the Irish Republicanism of the Keenans which led me to choosing my current surname when I was 11.​​ 

Delving into the world of genealogy and DNA has expanded my view of how I got here, while at the same time giving me a renewed appreciation of how we are all related and made from the same stuff, and how irrelevant concepts like surnames are.​​ 

DNA matches can only be made back for 6 generations or so, because beyond that we are essentially no more related to any individual ancestor than we are to the general population of the area they lived in. The threads of the ~0.4% of our DNA that is unique to us disappear into the general pool of humanness, both looking backwards and forwards.