The Webb Wagg Family in Australia

Part 5: Testing the Wegg family structure with DNA evidence Scope and purpose This post examines whether autosomal DNA evidence supports the documentary reconstruction of the Norwich Wegg family developed in earlier stages of this investigation. That reconstruction was built using parish registers, census records, naming patterns, chronology, and migration context, and accommodates William Webb Wagg’s  separation from his family through transportation to Australia , proposing a coherent family structure within which he plausibly fits.The purpose of the present analysis is not to generate new hypotheses, but to test whether the genetic relationships predicted by that documentary framework can be observed among known descendants when examined at scale. The DNA analysis presented here follows established best practice in genetic genealogy. Rather than relying on individual centimorgan values — which are highly variable at this generational distance — it focuses on shared-match pattern...

Part 4: Roots in Norwich, Norfolk Methodological note:  This post examines the William's family using documentary records; the DNA evidence is addressed separately in the following post. By mid-1850, the Tasmanian record for William Wagg ends. His probation was formally revoked after he failed to appear at muster, and from that point onward he disappears from official oversight. When he next appears in the documentary record, in 1853, he is in Sydney — working at sea under the name  William Webb  and marrying  Sarah Turner  as  William Wagg . To bridge that gap, and to assess the family information recorded in the Tasmanian convict indents, this part of the investigation turns back to England to examine what can be established from contemporary English records about William’s origins and immediate family in Norwich. We begin by examining what can be established about William’s early life, parents, and siblings from English records alone, before turning to D...