A couple of days ago, I wrote about finding a likely cousin in New Zealand via a dna test (“Unraveling family ties via DNA“).

A quick look through my late-sister’s notes on family history provided a possible clue. This is on my mom’s paternal line. It seems that a great-great-grandfather’s brother, Frederick Duke Yonge, was a Lieutenant in the British Navy in the mid-19th century. But he apparently went awol in late 1854 while the ship was in Bermuda, and next turned up in New Zealand in 1855. He married, had children, and his family has apparently been in New Zealand since.

Ian Yonge, a British lawyer who has been the family historian, compiled an account that makes interesting reading (“A Naval Mystery“).

So does Frederick Duke Yonge does provide a potential link that could account for my partial DNA match with a Maori woman whose English/Scotch great-great-grandfather arrived in New Zealand just a few years later? Somewhere along the line was there a liaison between descendants of those original settlers that left DNA evidence?

It makes for an interesting brain-teaser, although in practical terms it really doesn’t mean anything, since these parts of the family have not had contact in generations. But interesting nonetheless.