The fifth Richard Phillips Memorial lecture took place on Friday 19th March 2021 via Zoom. This was an event that should have taken place in April 2020 but, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, had to be postponed.
DNA for family historians was a subject of great interest to Richard. He was an early adopter of the use of DNA in family history and 11½ years ago gave a talk to The Badsey Society on this very subject. Richard described, in his usual meticulous detail how, by taking a DNA test, this may help you with some of those unsolved queries in your family history research. Through his mother’s family, the Wells, he had been in contact with a family that had been in America since the 1620s and whose ancestor was a Thomas Welles, one of the first governors of Connecticut. DNA proved conclusively that Richard and the Americans were distant cousins, both descended from the same ancestor who lived in a small Warwickshire village in the 16th century. Another DNA cousin from Australia visited Badsey in 2006.
It thus seemed appropriate that our guest speaker for our fifth lecture should be Amelia (more commonly known as Mia) Bennett, who has great knowledge on the subject and could bring us up-to-date with the latest information for family historians.
Mia has followed in her ancestors’ footsteps as an engineer for her ‘paid’ job but loves using her analysis skills to investigate the fascinating world of her relatives. She has been researching her family history for over 25 years and has been a trustee of the Society of Genealogists for over five years. She has run brickwall workshops, provided advice and worked in the Society of Genealogists’ library. She is an alumni of the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy and has travelled internationally to meet others who share her passion.
Science is at the fore with her interest in using DNA to solve older genealogical mysteries. In her talk, Mia explained, in simple language, how DNA testing works and how it can be used to answer all sorts of questions about family history.
More information about Mia can be found at her website, Mia Genealogy.