Surname Saturday - FREEDMAN or FREEMAN

When I saw Randy Seaver's Surname Saturday blog on his Freeman ancestors Freeman (England > Massachusetts) I thought I would also look at my Freedman ancestors of which there is only one, Esther Freedman.

My ancestral line is:

1.  Rosemary Tissott

2. Eric Henry Lindsay Tissott (1911-2006)
3. Eileen Mary Brothers (1908-1994)

6. Walter Albert Brothers (1876-1964)

7. Sarah Reeder (1874-1951)

14. James Thompson Reeder (1835-1907)

15. Elizabeth Barnard (1844-1937)

28. Byworth Thompson (1812-1895)

29. Mary Reeder (1809-1870)

58. Peter Reeder (1769- <1841)

59. Hannah Hewitt (1772-1858)

116. Peter Reeder (1736- <1788)

117. Esther Freedman (ca 1737 - (1770-1788))

Little is known of Esther Freedman, my 4th great grandmother, outside of her marriage to Peter Reeder.  Esther and Peter were married by Banns at Deopham, Norfolk on the 11 October 1758. At the time of her marriage Esther (or Hester) was a Singlewoman of the Parish of Deopham. Their children were born in Great Ellingham, Norfolk and are:

Rachel Reeder (1759-

Elizabeth Reeder (1763-1781)

Esther Reeder (1765-

Peter Reeder (1767-1768)

Peter Reeder (1769 <1841)

James Reeder (1770-

I've been unable to find any further reference to Esther after the birth of her son James in 1770 and before the death of her husband Peter Reeder in 1788 where his status is that of "widower". 

AncestryDNA - Examples of Results

 I've had a request for an example of the reports obtained from AncestryDNA. These images are what you can expect after Ancestry has processed your autosomal DNA.

My Genetic Ethnicity is shown at the top of the results.

My Genetic Ethnicity

I appear to be 48% Scandinavian, 41% British Isles and 11% Southern European. Considering that the ethnicity results are from hundreds of years ago and the Vikings settled the north and east of the British Isles while the Romans had garrisons up and down the British Isles I don't find this very surprising. The little blue blobs in the British Isles are where my direct lines of ancestors were born.

There are 2 options for viewing the list of matching member trees, by relationship and by when the results were added to the list.

Member Match by Relationship

Member Match by Date

Both displays are a list of people who have a possible match to my autosomal DNA. I've never received a match closer than 4th cousin because the database at this point in time contains only people in North America. Perhaps I'll do better in the future.
The gold star tells me that these member trees had someone with a surname that is in my direct line of ancestors. Those without a gold star are matches but if there is someone in the tree of interest to me they aren't a surname match. I've reviewed all my matches and feel comfortable ignoring these trees for now.

The next step is to review the matches. For my examples here I've chosen a tree with 2 surname matches, Dickerson and Parker. Dickerson is a surname on my mother's line and Parker on my father's line.

Surnames that match my surnames from spider63lady's tree

Clicking on Dickerson gives me the detail of that surname.

Dickerson Matches in our trees.

If we have a common Dickerson ancestor it will be before the Dickerson family left England and neither of us has taken the line back far enough.

Clicking on the "Map and Location" button provides a listing of locations that are in common between our 2 trees.

Matching Locations between our trees.

Once again the blobs indicate place of birth; brown for spider63lady's tree, blue for my tree and green for a common location. Clicking on "England" shows the detail of people who were born in England.

People born in England in our direct lines.

I have a lot of work to do to make any sense of these results. I'm going to concentrate on matches that have birth locations in Norfolk and Staffordshire in England and also Australia. The raw data is now available and I plan to use some of the more advanced tools available on other sites to investigate my genetic genealogy.

Ancestry has said they have some better analysis tools in the works but nothing concrete has been announced.