It is a long time since I posted anything, years in fact, and that is because I have not had any information to post.
We had plans to spend a month on Ithaca, the birthplace, or so we believe from family stories, of Greek Charlie Ross but Covid came along and trashed those plans. Family circumstances have not allowed that plan to be restored once the Covid insanity came to an end.
I did however decide to do a couple of Ancestry tests, despite having little faith in them, after a Greek genealogy blog recommended they can be helpful, particularly 23& Me. So, I did one with Ancestry which came back with zero connection to southern Europe or Greece and was a waste of money. The 23&Me test did show Greek ancestry with a link to the Ionian Islands, i.e. Ithaca, and so I hoped it might bring forth a relative with information about the family. Vain hope, because despite a couple of Greek names appearing, attempts to connect with them achieved absolutely nothing in response.
That has happened over the past 18 months and while there is a chance that some distant relative might pop up, it is at this point a fruitless quest. Or has been. Ancestry DNA tests are very hit and miss and while they can be useful in connecting with relatives going back 4-6 generations, perhaps, maybe, they are pretty useless beyond that, despite their claims.
It is also a numbers game where the more people who have been tested the more chances you will get a match. And while another third cousin, Sally Hetherton, grand-daughter of the youngest son of Charlie Ross and Mary Atkins, Spiros, did make contact with a Greek connection on 23& Me, the communication yielded nothing concrete about our family.
So, for the moment anyway, the DNA experiment has only brought dead ends. I live in hope that someone, somewhere, sometime may unearth a letter or photo which brings some progress to the search for Charlie Ross. Meanwhile I will repost an image of his grandaughter, Flora Ross Swincer, who was said to be the spitting image of him. Unfortunately while she inherited his looks, she also inherited his asthma, but not his weak heart.
