Page 277 - Cousins - Celebrities, Saints & Sinners

• Grandfather Frank Armstrong – his wife Edna Bulen’s family were originally from the
Norfolk/Suffolk area in the far central eastern corner of England.
• Great grandfather Alva Armstrong – his wife Mary Cotton’s family were from the
Devon/Cornwall area in the far southwestern corner of England.
nd
• 2 Great grandfather David Armstrong – his wife Sarah Treadway’s family were from
Semley, Wiltshire in south central England, just northwest of the Isle of Wight.
rd
• 3 Great grandfather Elliot Armstrong – his wife Eleanor Phelps’ family was from
Tewksbury, Gloucester, also in south central England but a bit further north than the
Treadways.

The Norwegian total is a bit bigger surprise as I know my maternal grandfather’s family came
from Sweden and my grandmother’s family from Norway. As a result, it seems incongruous that
only 8% of my DNA is Swedish, while 39% is Norwegian. While I understand that the percentage
of DNA you get from you grandparents is seldom exactly proportionate, this disparity seemed
unusual. While there is no clear explanation, the geography of Scandinavia and the ethnic
overlap between the two countries is historical fact; so, distinctions between the two are
frequently a bit blurry. Unfortunately, the Relative Finder program seems to be slanted towards
identifying central European relatives, as not one of the cousins identified in the LDS database
came from the Scandinavian side of my family (I did, however, add one from my personal family
tree database under the category “Movie Stars”).

The 8% ethnicity breakdown shown for Germanic Europe appears to relate to DNA contributed
primarily by my paternal great-grandmother Lillie Jane Odekirk who’s family were of Dutch
descent from the province of North-Holland. Several cousins from her line are highlighted here.

While we have only been able to trace our Armstrongs for a few generations since they arrived
in America, we have discovered that they married into some very interesting families with
distant bloodlines that have provided us with many, many fascinating cousins!

If you would like to try out the Relative Finder application on your own, you must first open a
Family Search account. This can be done at – https://www.familysearch.org/en/.

Once you have opened an account, information on how to upload your GEDCOM family tree file
can be found at – https://www.familysearch.org/help/salesforce/viewArticle?urlname=Uploading-
GEDCOM-Files-and-Copying-the-Information-to-Family-Tree&lang=en.

After you have cleaned up your tree information, log into Relative Finder and discover your
cousins here - https://www.relativefinder.org/#/main.

Be ready - you may be surprised by who you find…

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