The "red-haired sailor"...

My fathers maternal grandfather have always been "unknown" for us. The church-records don´t give any clues and since my grandmother was born in 1908, there are no one still alive to ask about it, that may have had any knowledge.

A rather vague story in our family said that the unknown father could have been a "red-haired sailor".
(Actually it was said he should have been a "captain" on a boat...)

My grandmother was extremely red-haired but neither her mother or any of her half-siblings were, so maybe it could be the truth about him being red-haired?
My grandmother gave birth to 10 children and almost everyone of them are more or less red-haired!. Also many of her grandchildren are red-haired in some degree, even myself and my son have a trace of it...

In Sweden there are of course red-haired people, but they are not common, perhaps 1-2 % of the population is said to be red-haired, some experts say it can be even less.

According to Wiki, red-hair are most frequent in Ireland and Scotland.

So its now very interesting that many of my fathers autosomal DNA-matches indicates he have an 25 % Irish or Scottish ancestry. Since all known parts of my fathers ancestry is all from Sweden, it sure make it very possible that my grandmothers unknown father was indeed Irish or Scottish (and most probably very red-haired..).

Today most of these matches are quite distant, but sooner or later a closer match will show up and make things more interesting.