Hi. I’m still working on this. So, Joseph Goudie and Eliza’s John Goudie can’t be brothers. Otherwise, Lily Ann would have married her uncle. There’s probably another John Goudie who was Joseph’s brother, but not the one who married Eliza. Lily Ann married Joseph and Esther Goudie’s son, William. John and Eliza would have been William’s in-laws. Lily Ann’s children are my mother’s first cousins.

I’ve been pouring through the handwritten pages of records and I found that there’s a huge gap in the Twillingate records, from 1853 until 1861, when they pick up again. They’re just missing. Eliza’s sister’s birth record is there from 1861. Her name was Priscilla Coombs. But Eliza’s birth record from 1860 is missing. Now I’m thinking that John Goudie may have been born in the Notre Dame Bay region as well.

He wouldn’t have been born in Pilley’s Island, or the town of Little Bay, because they weren’t communities yet in 1859. Maybe Round Harbour, Twillingate (North or South), Back Harbour, Bayview, Durrell, Exploits, New Bay Head, or Little Bay Islands. I haven’t found him anywhere else, and my family’s DNA simply does not support a Labrador birth. Not from my mom, myself, cousins, and cousins’ children. We all have indigenous DNA, but not enough to originate from the Labrador Goudies, although it looks like Joseph Goudie was from Labrador, but I haven’t found his birth record either. DNA has changed everything for me.

I’ll keep looking. But, for now, that’s how I understand things at this point. I guess we’re second cousins, once removed, even though we didn’t share enough DNA for that to show up. You’d be my mother’s first cousin, twice removed.