Excited about getting your DNA results and looking at your matches? But what happens when the only matches you have on the illegitimate side are all distant? This is where traditional genealogy must be your primary research tool, but it can still be a bit overwhelming. One of my clients had this problem.
My client wanted to identify her maternal grandfather. Her mother was illegitimate and born in 1917. I had identified and ruled out all the DNA matches that clearly related to her known family lines. Many DNA sites have some way of leaving notes on DNA matches and this is very useful for quickly showing which family line the matches appear to be connected to. Ancestry has a colour coding system so I used different colours for different family lines. In this case I used just one colour for all of her paternal lines, and another for her mother’s maternal line. The other colours were used as we worked through the DNA matches.
DNA Matches
The matches that were left were two 2nd-3rd cousins, and rest were in the 5th cousin or further range. Third cousins share the same 2 x great grandparents. Chris was the closest DNA match. Looking at the matches he and my client shared (and did not share) we quickly determined the relevant line was via his mother’s paternal side. Paul, the other 2-3rd cousin shared a surname with Chris, however the whole family lived in the USA since the mid 1880’s, and he did not respond to our messages. Paul was not a shared match with Chris. Be aware that all DNA websites work slightly differently and some do not list all of the shared matches, but only relatively close links. In this case Paul was eventually proven to be a direct link to Chris, but his relationship was calculated by the website as being further from Chris so do not appear on the shared matches.
Online Trees
The next group of DNA matches investigated were those that had online trees, especially those with large trees as the chances were higher for them to contain a matching family line. The next stage was more arduous and took several months of contacting DNA matches (some of never replied) and with or without their help, to research their family trees. One tree owner was very helpful for a while but then contact suddenly stopped. I later learnt he had passed away. It was through his extensive tree that I linked him to Paul in the USA.
Having found a definite family link between three matches all of the family tree information was added to a newly created tree on Family Tree Maker, ensuring that each of the DNA matches appeared on the tree. It was clear from this that all three matches shared the same 3 x great grandparents – Frederick and Emma. Frederick, however, had been married twice and had 14 children of which only 2 had not survived. Another distant match that came via Emma’s parents confirmed we had the correct couple, and immediately ruled out Frederick’s four children from his 2nd marriage. Six lines ruled out and eight more to look into. To make this more visible on the FTM tree, I changed the gender of the children I had ruled out to unknown. This gave them a grey profile picture.
A Different Family
Another look at the remaining DNA matches identified two that shared a link with each other but did not appear to be linked to the family identified. One had an extensive tree and the other had only a few people on one family line. I worked on the small tree to find a link between the two matches but found nothing that was even geographically close. There was however one name that was shared between the two. By double checking information in the larger tree I noticed that a mistake of parentage had been made quite early on the surname that matched the smaller tree. I redid the research on this tree and immediately found the family link between the two matches. They shared the same 3 x great grandparents. The problem now was how to link this family with the family I had originally identified.
About this time my client tried to contact the only person who was listed as being a shared match between these two families. She had been given the DNA kit as a gift and had no interest in pursuing her family history. With nothing to work on my client asked her for the details of her grandparents so I could research their trees to find a match. Fortunately she was happy to do this and the link was almost immediately made. Her maternal grandmother lived in the same place as the 2nd family I was researching. Very quickly I found that her aunt had married into the 2nd family but most importantly her sister Selina married one of Frederick and Emma’s sons in a completely different county from the one she was born in. A distance of almost 50 miles.
Narrowing it Down
Selina and her husband George had three sons who would be about the same age as my client’s unknown grandfather. I added a new ‘son’ to the family of George and Selina, his illegitimate daughter and my client (his granddaughter). Sometimes graphical representation is an easier way to explain and see complex relationships. To this end I used the colour coding on the tree I had created from all of the DNA matches. FTM has a colour coding system that will identify all of a person’s ancestors including all of the ancestor’s descendants. Using different colours for each of the DNA matches (sometimes grouping matches if they shared the same 2/3x great grandparents to reduce the number of colours used) I could show that each DNA match was related to these three sons in some way. To assist identification for my client, the children I ruled out were changed to a ‘unknown’ gender.
All we needed to do now was to narrow it down at little more, but we were almost there. One of the son’s was the 2x great grandfather of Chris. As this was within the predicted relationship (2nd cousin once removed) between him and my client, that ruled this son as being my client’s grandfather. This left just two sons. Both were married at the time of my clients mother was conceived. One had children the other did not. My client is now in the process of trying to find a living descendant in the hope they will take a DNA test to confirm her mother’s parentage.
Although this may read as a quick process it has actually taken many hours over almost 9 months of gradually working through the matches, sending and receiving messages with DNA matches, creating numerous family trees (sometimes from scratch) and creating a new DNA tree containing over 350 people. We have now brought the search down to just two brothers, one of whom will be my client’s grandfather.
If you want help with your DNA matches, contact me via my contact page.
This article has been written with the full permission of my client. We are both very grateful for the assistance the other DNA matches have given us in this research
