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Digital Image Solves a DNA Puzzle

By Lisa Kirby and Nick Wooster

A couple of years ago Lisa took a DNA test which was uploaded onto Ancestry. This often produced DNA matches mostly with relatives who were listed as distant cousins.
Recently Lisa discovered a match with an Anthony Wooster stating they were 3rd-5th cousins on her paternal side.
Lisa could see on Anthony's tree that his father was called Thomas Wooster and was born in 1927. His mother was called Margaret Schuler. Lisa tried to look up their names on the Great Wooster Tree but could not locate them. After messaging Anthony via Ancestry and not receiving a response, she turned to Nick for help.
When Lisa found this match it was easy enough to find Anthony's father as Thomas George Wooster (b.1927). He was on the 1939 Register, aged 12 living with two siblings, James (aged 17) and Philip (aged 13), someone redacted (another sibling perhaps?) and Margaret M Davies and Richard Davies. Searching the birth index gave their mother as Ryan, and this is where we ran into a problem since there didn't appear to be any Wooster-Ryan marriages.
However, with the availability of the new digital image service, and Thomas's brother James being just old enough (b.1922), we were able to acquire James's birth certificate in minutes. This gave us James, and hence Thomas's mother as Margaret Mary Wooster, formally Ryan and their father as Thomas Wooster, a boiler scaler of Willis Street, Poplar, just a short distance from Lisa's ancestors.

1932 photo of The East End Maternity Hospital on Commercial Road, Poplar, where James Wooster was born in 1922. Photo: Elizabeth Doyle Research


1910 photo of the hospital when it was called The East End Mothers' Home. Photo: Elizabeth Doyle Research
For more information on the East End Maternity Hospital see Elizabeth Doyle Research


2022 Google Maps screenshot of the hospital. Until very recently still a NHS facility

With this information several things fell into place very quickly. A Thomas Wooster married a Margaret M REGAN in Poplar in 1922, apparently a mis-transcription of Ryan on the marriage index temporarily throwing us off the scent. Thomas and Margaret were found on the London Electoral Rolls in 1925 and 1930 living in Poplar, but by 1932 Margaret was alone, or would have been the only adult in the house, presumably having been widowed. Margaret M Wooster married a Richard Davies in 1935, thereby explaining the 1939 Register entry.
Finally we linked Thomas Wooster, Anthony's grandfather to the GWT as we had a Thomas Wooster who died in Poplar in 1930 already on the tree. Thomas was a grandson of (yet another!) Thomas Wooster and Elizabeth Walden, Lisa's 2xgreat grandparents, making Lisa and Anthony 3rd cousins, just what the DNA result said! Skipping back a generation also means that Anthony, like Lisa, is our Newsletter Editor, David Brooke's 4th cousin.
Further investigation revealed that Thomas Wooster and Margaret Ryan had three more children who all died in infancy in 1925, 1927 and 1929. This would add weight to the fact pointed out by David's great grandfather, John Thomas Wooster, when he was a councillor and involved in the Poplar rates rebellion in 1921 that, Poplar suffered massively from infant deaths. Who the redacted person is on the 1939 Register remains a mystery.
On a separate note and as a pure coincidence whilst looking closely at the DNA match, Lisa discovered that Anthony's mother Margaret Schuler descended from Lisa's 5x great grandfather- James Warren on her mother's side of the family. So it appears that Lisa is in fact related to Anthony from both her paternal and maternal side!

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  Page last updated

  26 May 2026