Canton Family History

A few lines about the financial aspects of CSP. First, a reminder that, as a Surname Project we get a group rate which is a large reduction on the charge for a single test.

FamilyTree DNA has also offered several discount Gift Certificates this ‘holiday season’. For the only test which this project will find useful - for 37 markers - the two 30 USD vouchers have now been taken by the first two tests. If that is a disappointment, please read on!

FTDNA also offer some 15 USD Gift Certificates, for 25 marker Y-DNA tests and for mtDNA (testing female lines). I would strongly recommend that no-one takes the 25 marker test just to get this discount - it isn’t sufficiently accurate for our genealogical purposes. With regard to the mtDNA vouchers, I would naturally support anyone who wishes to take this test, though it will not contribute to the CSP. In short, if - now or later - you want to take advantage of any such offers, please be sure to contact me first as, as project administrator, I have to carry out some formalities.

Donations: I mentioned in an early newsletter on this subject that I would be fund-raising. As a result we have three more 30 USD vouchers on offer. There is at present no time-limit on these, though all donors will be hoping they will be taken up soon!  Each reduces the cost of a 37-marker test to 159 USD.

We also had a donation of 30 USD which was earmarked by the donor for a particular branch, the PM/S (Stackpole) line, so - rather appropriately - this went to subsidise our first test. There remains  90 USD in the fund, without any conditions, and I think it is most appropriate to use it to attract three more new tests.

If anyone reading this wants to sponsor a test from a particular line, this can be done by clicking on the Donations link at http://www.familytreedna.com/public/CantonSurnameProject/  and letting me know at once if you want it dedicated to a specific purpose - no need to do so if it is a general donation.

As any reader of this blog will know, I believe strongly that DNA tests will help us sort out some problems and find unexplored links in Canton genealogy. As I can’t take a test myself, I intend to make a major contribution to the costs of the first PM/P tests - this will be separate from the existing funds. The ideal is to find two PM/P descendants early on, no closer than second cousins - i.e. with a common great-grandfather in James Canton. These two tests would, I believe, provide some good base data against which to measure other results. I am trying to contact possible candidates and will keep you informed.

To take advantage of the discounts outlined above:

1. Let me know that you plan to take a test. This is only because of the discount and is not necessary otherwise. It won’t work if I am, for instance, away from home - but when I am here (most of the time) I do check my emails several times each day.

2. Complete the online form for joining and be sure to request ‘pay by invoice’.

3. Notify me as quickly as possible that you have joined, quoting the ‘Kit Number’ you will have been given. This needs to be in writing and please check you have copied it accurately.

4. I will then e-mail FTDNA and ask that the relevant discount is credited to you - the system works well in practice because the staff are very helpful. Kits are posted out, with invoices, on the next working day. (For UK members: the office is six hours behind our time.)

Of course I will let you know that the procedure has been carried out.

Finally, a reminder that readers are very welcome to leave comments here or to me by email (see below).

Sheila

My contact details are at

http://www.one-name.org/profiles/canton.html

UPDATE: The ‘holiday season’ discount vouchers are no longer available, having expired at the turn of the year. Canton Surname Project is still able to offer its own 30 USD discounts - details on request. 

Recently on the Guild of ONS mailing list someone sent these links:

Records of Sun Fire Insurance are at the Guildhall Library, see
http://www.history.ac.uk/gh/fire.htm and
http://www.history.ac.uk/gh/sun.htm
For the GL lines (earliest known ancestors in GLS, later in London) these are records worth a look: Nathaniel Canton (1785-1865) and George Augustus Canton (1790-1860) appear among the insured parties, and there are fascinating references to one or more buildings named Canton Cottage, East India Road, Poplar (sometimes Canton Place etc) - I hope we could find out more about this.

Also via the Guild mailing-list, for early Australian electoral rolls see http://www.ancestry.com.au/

The index has over 40 Canton entries, though a given individual might appear in up to half a dozen entries, e.g., John Thomas Canton. The first time I tried to see full details I seemed to be told I should have a different subscription - but the next time the links worked. It’s a great deal of useful information.

We are delighted to announce a second Y-DNA test booked for the Canton Surname Project. This is by a descendant of line PR, traced back to Rhoscrowther parish, PEM, but fairly likely an offshoot of another known line. As we must wait patiently for some actual results to compare, there’s no point in surmising right now, but it is all potentially very exciting.

Please consider adding soon to the numbers being tested, either yourself or by asking a Canton you know.

Sheila

 In my last posting I wrote briefly of my Canton great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather but failed to post this photograph of them. (Even now I have only managed a thumbnail, which I hope you can see.)  From the left: Alice Georgina (1887-1941), wife of Sydney John Peters, her father William Henry Canton (1867-1932), her grandfather James (1843-1930) and her baby Dorothy, taken in 1913. Alice was my grandmother’s sister, killed tragically in Plymouth in the Blitz. Her younger daughter Grace is still a dear member of our family. 

As I said last time, I don’t qualify to take the Y-DNA test, so need descendants of James and William Henry to stand in for me! Unfortunately, I have lost touch with key cousins - e-mails have bounced - so I am hoping someone reading this will offer to reconnect me, though I will be finding time to write individual letters in the weeks to come.

I’m sorry not to have signed the last posting - I somehow thought it was done automatically. For any new readers, I’m Sheila Rowlands and have been a keen family historian since the seventies, researching not just Cantons in a registered one-name study but all the ancestry of my three children. I used to be a teacher, with History as my subject, latterly lecturing on Welsh genealogy in University of Wales Aberystwyth extra-mural and summer schools, but now retired. With my husband John I have written books on Welsh family history and surnames.  I never feel jaded about the subject of my own family research as there are new discoveries all the time. The possibilities that genetic genealogy/DNA testing offers form an exciting new dimension.

Sheila

Although I have been researching Canton family history since the 1970s, and registered the name with the Guild of One-Name Studies in 1980, I have never grown tired of delving into all types of records for even the most trivial information about these close or distant connections of my grandmother. Suddenly, after a house-move which made me look long and hard at the very large number of lever-arch files and folders which have accumulated (some of it on computer, but by no means all), I realised that the time had come to try to tie up at least some of the loose ends.

Most of the lines relating to my own family or to those of my many correspondents peter out in the 17th or 18th centuries. Like a high proportion of Canton descendants, my roots are in Pembrokeshire, where the surname has existed since the 12th century and where it appears over and over again, intermittently and largely disconnected, throughout the centuries up to the earliest (not very early) surviving parish registers.  For the most part, wills and other obvious sources have been searched - it’s not impossible that more remain to be found but is there time for me to find them?

This last year or so, I read a series of articles in the Journal of the Guild of One-Name Studiesby Susan C. Meates which brought home to me the possibilities of DNA testing for families like these - not just the Pembrokeshire (PEM hereafter) ones but also a large branch which appears in 17th century Gloucestershire (GLS), which happens to have had strong trading links with PEM, Irish lines (PEM Cantons were among the earliest Anglo-Norman settlers in Ireland), and some mysterious Cantons who appear in Bermuda registers. And, hopefully, many more.

So the grandly-named Canton Surname Project (CSP) was set up a few months ago, aiming to test  (Y-DNA testing of the paternal line)  as many people with the surname as possible. My idea was for it to remain dormant until I was straight after my house-move. Well, of course I’m still not ’straight’ but time is going on faster than ever. In the past few weeks I have sent out a series of explanatory newsletters to the people I know with e-mail. I also began writing letters to people without e-mail, sending them a package of information. Members have be male and have the surname Canton, or one of its variants such as Cantan, Canten or Cantin; however, all of us should benefit from the results of tests.

All the effort paid off yesterday (17 Nov 2007) when we signed up the first Canton, whose test kit is in the post.  Two others have also committed to taking part. These are very early days for our project but it is exciting to contemplate the results it may produce. 

Details of the CSP and its progress will be available at: www.familytreedna.com/public/cantonsurnameproject and informal updates (as well as other items of Canton interest) will apear on this blog.

In the meantime, we really need more Cantons to step forward, from any line, anywhere in the world. Right now we are looking especially for descendants of my great-great-grandfather James Canton (1843-1930) of Pembroke and of my great-grandfather William Henry Canton (1867-1932). 

For details of the Canton One-Name Study, of which this is a part see www.one-name.org/profiles/canton.html