holy cow. i sent a message to my nearest dna match. she is adopted.

[csziggy]

27. Moorish is an old broad term, just as "Arab" or "Muslim" are today

Most of the "Moors who invaded Spain came from Morocco, so Northwestern Africa. I've never researched how they look, but Spaniards can have black, curly hair and light eyes.

Remember, it has been proven that even as early as Roman times, people of African descent lived in Britain and continued to pretty much up to current times with few interruptions in new individuals going to the British Isles. Also consider the British Colonial times, when children of the colonizers that could "pass" for white were often sent back to England for an education, some of whom stayed.

Some of my brother in law's ancestors lied every census and show up on few records. They also moved often so trying to trace them is a nightmare. Some years everyone over eight was literate, the next census no one in the household could read and write. Their children often changed names and the parents' ages changed drastically (by over ten years sometimes) from census to census. For a while I didn't think I had traced them, but once I got the pattern of their lies, I decided the families I'd been tracing were all the same one.

The ones that puzzle me are the ones where a kid (or two or three) will show up as a young child, then ten years later they are not in the household, then in their old age the parents are living with them. I did find at least one of those - the child had been sent to live with a grandparent, probably to take care of them in their old age. Then after she married, had her own children and house, her parents moved in with her and her husband. That case got me the mother's maiden name and parents since the girl was definitely the same one.