Whatmore Family History

Mary Ann (Polly) Dyson was my paternal grandmother. She was born on 6 February 1876 in Attercliffe and married Noah Whatmore in 1905. She died on 8 December 1936 aged 60 and is buried in the churchyard of St Thomas’s Brightside Sheffield. Whilst to me Mary Ann Dyson is a very special person even though I never met her, the DNA of her Dyson male ancestors are of interest to all those interested in genealogy and in DNA testing.

Mary Ann Dyson   Copyright: Rhys Whatmore

I am not a scientist and thus I shall only try to give a brief explanation of what DNA testing involves and what it can tell us.

The simplest way to collect DNA is to obtain a swab from the mouth of a particular person of interest. The cells collected on the swab can then be analysed.

 There are two chromosomes which are of particular interest to family historians:

Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) which is obtained only from the egg cell of the mother. Only females can therefore pass mtDNA on to their offspring.  A test can be used to show which of the seven main ‘clans’ a female line belongs to and can be used to confirm that two individuals share a common female direct maternal line ancestor.

Y chromosome DNA (Y-DNA)  which exists only in males. It is passed from male to male via a sperm cell which contains the Y chromosome of the father. The information carried by Y chromosomes is inherited largely intact over time. The genetic material on the Y chromosome is not mixed with each new generation.  A test can show if two individuals have a common ancestor. Mutations occur to the Y chromosome over time. The rate of mutations is roughly known. The number of mutation found in a Y chromosome can be used to determine roughly when a common ancestor lived.

 More information can be found at this link: http://www.oxfordancestors.com/

I am most grateful to my cousin Hazel Wells (nee Dyson) who first drew my attention to DNA testing when she sent me a tape recording of a radio programme featuring Professor Bryan Sykes, Professor of Human Genetics at Oxford University. During the programme he explained that he had done some research on the Dyson family and this had indicated that 90% of the men tested had a common ancestor.

In his book ‘Adam’s Curse’ published by Bantam Press 2003, Professor Sykes goes into some detail about his Dyson family research.

Professor Sykes had been researching his own family from Yorkshire and had found not only that they were prolific but that they had tended to produce more sons than daughters. Looking for another prolific Yorkshire family he chose the Dyson family. It had been thought that the name meant ‘son of dyer’ and since there must have been a great many dyers in medieval Yorkshire – the surname Dyson was believed have multiple origins.

Bryan Sykes obtained DNA samples from 23 male Dysons and to his surprise 9 had exactly the same Y-chromosome signature and a further 11 had chromosomes that were very closely related to it. This meant that nearly 90% had the same or related Y – chromosomes and therefore had a common ancestor.

Could the common founder be identified?

Looking through court and estate records George Redmonds, the Yorkshire surname expert had came across a lady called Dionissia  of Linthwaite. She had been convicted more than once for cattle rustling and other crimes.  She appears in the Wakefield Court Rolls in 1286 as Dyonisia–de-Lynthayth and in 1306 as Dye-de-Lyntwayt. She had a son, John, who was known as John Dyson. He appears in the Court Rolls in 1316 as John Dyson of Lyntwayt. The later Court Rolls have the following names:

1379 Adam Dison (Crosland)

1492 John Dyson (Linthwaite)

1545 Edward Dyson (Crosland)

According to one Dyson family historian, Dionysia’s husband was Peter Mallesheved (Moleshead) and they had a daughter Agnes as well as their son John.

An Adam de Mallesheved appears in the Wakefield Court Roll for 1274.

Linthwaite   Photograph by Nevin Arrow and reproduced here in accordance with the terms of the site licence which can be viewed at this link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

Bryan Sykes now did some rough calculations as to the time when the common Dyson ancestor had lived. He multiplied the number of mutations which had taken place in the Y-chromosome of the Dysons (11/20) by the mutation rate (1 change per 50 generations) and calculated that the common ancestors had lived 27.5 generations ago. Allowing 25 years for a generation, 27.5 generations takes us back 687 years.  The calculation was done in 2001 so that date of the common ancestor came out as approximately 1314. So was John Dyson of Linthwaite the common Dyson ancestor? We know he was around in 1316, so there is a reasonable possibility that he was.

Returning to my own grandmother, what do we actually know about Mary Ann Dyson’s direct ancestors?

Mary Ann’s  father was George Dyson born in Sheffield in 1850. He married Rebecca Glaves in 1872. George died in December 1938 at Sheffield.

George Dyson’s father was another George Dyson, born in 1814 at Eckington, Derbyshire, a few miles south of Sheffield. George married Mary Anne Whittaker in 1838. he died in Sheffield in 1860.

George Dyson’s father was a Joseph Dyson who was living with his wife Elizabeth at Mosborough, Eckington Parish when their son George was born. Joseph was a scythe maker. His death has not been traced.

Mosborough, Derbyshire  Photograph by Andrew Loughran and reproduced here in accordance with the terms of the site licence which can be viewed at this link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

Although Joseph Dyson could have originated in nearby Sheffield, it seems more likely that he was the Joseph who was baptised at Staveley in 1778. Staveley is the next village to Eckington. The parents of the Joseph Dyson born at Staveley were a Thomas and Ann.

Thomas Dyson was baptised in 1735 at Staveley and married an Ann. His parents were a John and Ruth.

 Staveley church   Copyright: Peter Saunders and reproduced here by his kind permission

John and born about 1711 and lived at the Forge, Staveley, hence he must be the son of John and Elizabeth whom we know from baptismal records were living at the forge in 1705

There was a John Dyson baptised at Staveley in 1664.His father was a Robert Dyasson, described in the parish register as ‘pregini’ i.e. pilgrim or traveller.  We cannot be certain that this John Dyson was the same one that married an Elizabeth and lived at the Forge.

In ‘Adam’s Curse’, Professor Sykes explains that some surnames tend to ‘daughter out’ over time – If a family has only daughters then the surname will of course disappear. One would expect the selection of those surnames which survive over time and those which ‘daughter out’ to be a random process but there are some surnames which seem to have proliferated far more than can be expected by chance. Professor Sykes thus speculates whether there are some Y chromosomes which have mutated in such a way as to be more likely to produce male rather than female children. He calls these the ‘selfish Y chromosomes’ He has studied his own Sykes family and has found that there is a small but significant trend towards more male than female children. This trend would obvious lead to far more Sykes family members over a period of time than would otherwise be the case. There may also be ‘selfish mitochondria’ in some females which ensure that more girls are born than males.

If we look at Mary Ann Dyson’s family we find the following:

John Dyson (born  about 1664) and Elizabeth had 3 sons and one daughter

Their son John (born about 1711) and Ruth had 3 sons and 7 daughters

Their son  Thomas (born 1735) and Ann had 3 sons and 3 daughters

Joseph (son of Thomas and Ann) born 1778 and Elizabeth had 2 sons

Thomas (son of Thomas and Ann) born 1804 and Ann had 7 sons and 1 daughter

George (son of Joseph and Elizabeth) born 1814 and Mary Ann had 4 sons and daughter

Their son George (born 1850) and Rebecca had 4 sons and 3 daughters

George Henry (son of George and Rebecca) born 1874 and Florence had 4 sons and 1 daughter

William (son of George and Rebecca) born 1882 and Phoebe had 7 sons and 2 daughters

James (son of George and Rebecca) born 1885 and Gertrude had no children

Joseph (son of George and Rebecca) born 1888 and Ivy had 3 sons and 4 daughters

The above information for the earlier generations does not take into account possible still births  or possible additional children whose births are not recorded on the IGI - nevertheless the data does suggest a certain trend.

I am not a statistician, so I will leave readers to work out whether or not there is a ‘selfish Y chromosome’ in this branch of the Dyson family.