Hananui Watson

Ancestors

Contents 1 Notice 2 Name; You're Pronouncing It Wrong 3 Autobiography 3.1 Childhood 3.1.1 Baby's first family tree 3.2 2012 – 2016: woah, the Internet 3.3 2017-to-now 4 Research Interests 4.1 Aotearoa me Te Wāhipounamu 4.2 Watsons 5 Advance Directive 6 Sources 6.1 Autosomal DNA 6.2 Footnotes

Notice

Do not be fooled by my name appearing on the profile(s) of your ancestor(s) or loved one(s) as a 'profile manager' (what does that mean on WikiTree?) I often am only such because I have created the relevant profiles, and I would love to transfer custodianship to persons who are more closely related (who are in theory, 'in the know') to the person whose profile is in question. Note that you will have to message me so that I receive your email address, and you should be prepared to be an active participant on WikiTree. Until that point, others' changes to these profiles are noted in my Family Activity Feed, and I can tend them as necessary.

If you otherwise feel you have something to add to these profiles, be not afraid to edit them yourself! Or leave a message somewhere. It's all a collaborative effort and this isn't just 'my' tree or work.

Name; You're Pronouncing It Wrong

The name given to me is unorthodox to most in the English-speaking world and resultingly many mispronounce the vowels; derived from reo Kāi Tahu, it was first given to a now-inactive volcano on Rakiura (photo) – 'Hananui' is comprised of two words: hana and nui... it becomes evident that the Kāti Māmoe, or whoever came before them, had witnessed the volcano when it was active!

As a child I wanted to be called Hana to – for whatever reason – spite Gregory, who hated shortened names. I am used to being addressed this way but I now feel it is better to speak the name properly.

Autobiography

Childhood

Three of Watson's grandparents had passed before she was born. A diviner told her aunt that Margaret embraced the unborn infant (she was almost to be called Maggie). Her cousin on this side was worried that she would be born on his birthday – she was born just a day before as the smallest, darkest, and sickiest baby of her mother.

Her family moved from their home when she was two years old to a "glorified retirement village", for Gregory's job. She had skin problems early on, a peanut allergy, and asthma. Her early memories include those of her father leaving at eight in the morning and not coming home before she went to sleep, as he was visiting one of the small town's several pubs. At some point this ended and he would come home, drinking up to eight cans of beer a night while he texted people, and serving dinner as late as midnight.

She remembers, vividly, sitting in her mother's red car parked outside the local school office, 'What are we doing here?', 'We are registering you for school.', 'But I don't want to go to school.' Watson was present at the Howell Reunion in 2005 albeit she does not remember it. For whatever reason, at some point, she wanted to 'be a scientist', or historian, and had some fascination with archaeology. She was known through some of her school years for her drawings or 'art'. She did win some first place prizes in her local A&P show for a 'painted' (permanent marker'd) rock of a gryphon, and a silver spraypaint pasta thing with a certain chimera-like fictional character in the centre, both which her teachers had her do. She never seriously pursued any of this as a skill or interest.

Baby's first family tree

Nā wai koe?

Watson's first family trees were written up while she was still in the classroom B2. Her mother helped her with the very first tree on an A4 sheet of paper, and as well helped her with a mihi which the template given to the class was... subpar. Probably what kept the interest going was being told that she was descended from 'a princess' and wanting to 'prove that we are all related', to which she was sometimes told that we are all descended 'from Lucy' or 'from Adam and Eve' (not by necessarily religious folk, mind you). One of her classmates also had claim of a papertrail descent from Robert I of Scotland.

Memories of her grandfather involve those of a strange old figure who was always in a hospital bed (Alzheimer's is pretty nasty), moved between three rooms which she was too afraid to enter most of the time. He passed away in 2010. There are old printouts from that year dated to 9 August, 4:27pm–5:54pm, from several websites relating to the mauka Hananui, Captain John Howell, and Captain Paddy Gilroy. A lot of these are from websites that no longer exist; New Zealand Tramper: hiking and w... (IMG_0128.JPG), Capt. John Howell, and The New Zealand Railways Magazine, vol. 4, issue 10.

With fascination regarding that 'princess' thing, Gregory used to tell tales of said ancestress being a daughter of Tūhawaiki, and Kāi Tahu attacking another tribe that being Kāti 'Moimoi' – as he pronounced it^[2] – who themselves had done the same to Waitaha. He believed that the Moriori, 'which you might be descended from' [???], were an offshoot of one of these – and generally believed some very strange things about his wife's heritage to which he once told their daughter that 'you only have as much Mayeu-ree blood as is in your big toe', and insisted that they were all more Scottish. On the other hand, a teacher had said that the Moriori completely missed Aotearoa me Te Wāhipounamu and went straight to Rēkohu.

In any case Watson's trees eventually expanded to the just out-of-date A2 posters from her parents' business and then would be transported around in tube rolls which those posters originally arrived in. Initially these only had first names so there would be a Margaret shown as daughter of Margaret daughter of Henrietta daughter of Margaret. Watson vaguely remembers meeting a handful of her great-(half)-aunts and asking them about relatives' first names while in a local pub, as well as her great-uncle and his family between the two big earthquakes In Christchurch.

2012 – 2016: woah, the Internet

One day she tried to set up an Ancestry tree and was told off by Stephanie for putting her name into a website. It was not until she was 13 that she tried this again, this time asking for permission (also note, terms of service do exist). Just before this, digital versions of the tree had existed on LibreOffice Draw... this was when she started adding last names. She was also experimenting with HTML as was broadly taught to her at school, which she used to list off her relatives and create unpublished profiles for some of them. She can still use (very) basic HTML and adores 'old website design', frequently sharing discovered gems with Chris when she stumbles across them (the likes of Mariners and ships in Australian Waters, Hilton Pond, and Tom's Whakapapa). He also lends his taste for certain varieties^[3][4] of the metal genre.

The first time a tween-aged Watson found the user-generated trees linking her Watsons to the Boyds of Kilmarnock and further back to various mediæval rulers she had thought 'no, that's not real, that's made up, we're not royalty'. Nowadays, she has a better understanding of how she could feasibly be descended from European royalty a hundred times over, even if that particular connection is not necessarily correct.

2017-to-now

"From the Moment I Understood the Weakness of My Flesh..."

As her father started dying of some genetic form of motor neurone disease (or, 'the thing that Stephen Hawking had'), and her mother was inspired to start DNA testing per success stories at the 2017 West reunion at the Bluff, Chris briefly shared an interest in their genealogy, and Wikitree became a part of his toolkit among other things. Several DNA tests were ordered for Gregory as he was dying the fastest and would soon be cremated: AncestryDNA, National Genographic, and Family Tree DNA with only an mtDNA Full Sequence and Y-111 working for the latter as his sample had not captured enough for future Big-Ys, leading to some demotivation around using that website until late 2021.

She had always been something approximating an agnostic atheist, especially having no Christian upbringing by her 'Presbyterian' and Roman Catholic parents, although she had always been curious about things unseen; a now defunct website, Mythical Creatures List, was her favourite back about 2012. In about 2020 became sympathetic to some concepts in Buddha Dharma, Platonism, some Gnostic Christian sects, and the simulation hypothesis.

In 2021, right before she purchased the earlier-mentioned Y-111 test in 2022, she was shown the family tree of a relatively recent migrant to New Zealand, of someone who also bore the maiden name Watson. Our Y-111's match list happened to show the same earliest known ancestor between a match and that woman. It turned out that they share an as-yet unidentified ancestor born about 1473.

In 2023 she finally, properly, noticed WikiTree and the way it attaches potential DNA matches to closely-related profiles. Her first move was to connect Stephanie in order to share their mtDNA haplogroup and facilitate interest for curious cousins now or in the future. Eventually, she realised that a huge collaborative project with accurate citations was exactly what she wanted when she was about 14 – to connect with relatives and just have a tree that they all worked on – and WikiTree exceeds her expectations.

As of the August 2023 update, AncestryDNA thinks that Hananui Watson inherited nearly all of her parents' Irishness, thus currently appearing twice as Irish as either of them and Chris.^[5][6]

Research Interests

"Ignorance brings chaos, not knowledge."

Aotearoa me Te Wāhipounamu

I grew up with my mother telling me that one of her professors in the University of Canterbury used to talk about Aotearoa never referring to the entire archipelago until the immigrant population said it did. Tangentially, they also used to discuss – like, throw around ideas – such things as reo Kāi Tahu possibly being a remnant of an earlier Polynesian language in some way as opposed to "standard Māori" (as I have seen it referred to...)

From the whole political song-and-dance phase of 2020–2021 around changing the country's name I have collected these... 'totally scholarly articles' from Stuff (and Otago Daily Times) on the matter:

• Should New Zealand be officially renamed Aotearoa?
• Historian's fancy, or widely used name? The battle over Aotearoa
• What's in a name? Aotearoa-New Zealand debate continues to simmer
• Ngai Tahu leader: Let’s not rush name change
• Aotearoa, Nu Tireni, New Zealand — it's a complicated issue

Watsons

"But, alas! these conquests of science must be purchased at a costly price. each stage of progress demands a sacrifice;"

I've become a bit of an advocate for Y-DNA testing to connect distant papertrails and families with each other. My father and brother have 73 total matches each on the Y-37 panel at Family Tree DNA, about 40 of which are 'related' beyond 1000 BCE, indicated by their terminal haplogroups through Big-Y700 testing (example). This leaves 30 potential real matches, half of which are known R-FTD38441 Watsons, while all the rest just haven't upgraded past Y-37. The Y-25 and Y-12 panels have over 1,000 and 2,000 matches respectively, so the BCE and non-upgrading-matches problems get worse thus I just ignore them.

R-FTD38441 is the haplogroup from which all of our Watsons are known to descend from, with a recent common ancestor born around the late 1400s (...so far estimated). There are only two other Watson families that are about this old, in terms of Y-DNA testing; R-FT71811 and R-FT89173, with a possible other being I-BY136377. Excepting our Waters match (as this is considered a variant), the list below is based on the various Watsons and Y-67 matched families. I am only interested in families post-1050 CE, primarily focused on getting each Watson branch linked up where they need to be.

I was told that our Watsons were a sept of Buchanan, but also that it was a clan itself with no chief, and that I should take a lot of pride in being Scottish or even Celtic. The Buchanan part probably isn't true, and our R-FTD38441 lineage descends from R-U106 (also its descendant R-DF98), which is more-or-less Germanic, and associated with Anglo-Saxons when looking at the British Isles. Our Y-DNA matches are painting a picture in my head that my recorded ancestors came from further south in, say, Lanarkshire, and before that we split off around the Border with our Robson cousins. It is shaky ground with only technically three Big-Ys and a bit of peripheral evidence. We need more data.

If you have read this far and you have a reason to suspect or mere simple curiosity to know if you're a male-line descendant for any of these families, I implore you to investigate Y-DNA testing so that we either discover another disconnected branch (we need a second lineage from Scotland me thinks), or the existing branches can be better covered, or you prove a connection to another family entirely which is also not unhelpful for everyone.

Advance Directive

"Anything not saved will be lost."

To aid WikiTree in the administration of my account should I be incapacitated by any means, I have been thinking about the handful of private profiles that I am managing which need to be transferred to the following WikiTreers, whether or not they are currently on the Trusted Lists:

1. To H Nicholls – all ancestors and relatives of himself.
2. To Chris Watson – all who are ancestors and relatives (and their spouses), of himself, and as well for Fearn and Hammill. Any and all unrelated Watson profiles.
3. To Michael Goodyear – all who are ancestors and relatives of himself.
4. To Andrea Brownridge – ancestors and relatives of Brownridge. Please add her to the Trusted Lists of Sandra's ancestors also. Add Chris instead / as well if this is not a viable pick.
5. To Mum – all who are ancestors, descendants, and relatives of herself (and their spouses).
6. To Wayne Woonton – descendants of Fanny Woonton, and their spouses.
7. To Charles Watson – descendants of William Watson.

These individuals are in my understanding active enough on WikiTree to be aware of updates and respond to queries about their managed profiles. With these picks I feel the affected profiles would be in safe hands if there are double-up managers. If in doubt, just add Chris.

I don't care how this profile is edited once I'm dead. Just make sure to remove some of this technical stuff and simply be objective.

Sources

Autosomal DNA

Paternal relationship is confirmed by an AncestryDNA test match between Gregory Watson and his second daughter Hananui. Predicted relationship from AncestryDNA: Parent/child, based on sharing 3,434 cM across 33 segments; Confidence: 100%.

Maternal relationship is confirmed by an AncestryDNA test match between Stephanie Gilroy and her daughter Hananui. Predicted relationship from AncestryDNA: Parent/child, based on sharing 3,447 cM across 29 segments; Confidence: 100%.

Footnotes

1. ↑ Tūhawaiki (1843) Shortland, Edward (ed., Jun 1851); The Southern Districts of New Zealand; A Journal, with Passing Notices of the Customs of the Aborigines. Paternoster Row: Longman, Brown, Green, & Longmans. Chapter V. Table F, unpaginated (between pp. 94 and 95).
2. ↑ To be fair, this is apparently how everyone in my great-grandmother's whānau were saying it until they realised it's incorrect, but Gregory kept referring to it like this even after everybody else stopped.
3. ↑ According to Spotify, Watson listened to Lacuna Coil's "Intoxicated" the most in 2023 CE, with alternative metal being her top genre.
4. ↑ According to YouTube, Watson listened to Everyone Loves A Villain's "Empty Mirrors" the most in 2022 CE.
5. ↑ cf. AncestryDNA FAQ
6. ↑ cf. (11 Apr 2017). Native Affairs – Full Blooded Māori. Te Ao Māori News.