A few weeks ago I said that I thought I may had found an Ancestry.com match relating to my Thurman family line. It was a very low confidence match and this person traced their Thurman line back to a Baze Thurman. I looked this line up at the Thurman DNA project and found they were in the R1b haplo group. The Y test results for my Thurman line came in this week. His haplo group wasn't R1b (thank goodness). My Thurman line is in the I1 Haplo group. So now it appears we are actually related to a Richard Thurman and Sarah of Prince Edward County, VA. We are still not certain whether my John Thurman was their son or nephew?
Going back to my false assumption that a very low confidence Thurman match may have related to my own line brings up an issue I've been wondering about. Does Ancestry use your tree information along with DNA results when assigning your matches? I would think they should not. What made me a little suspicious about this possibility is the fact I have a number of matches with ancestors who have similar last names as mine. One of my lines is Kapple. I have Capel, Capple, and Chappel matches. The spelling of my surname changed from Koppel to Kapple. I looked at the matches with the similar names, and found they would most likely have no relationship to my own surname. This could all be a coincidence because I have 5000 matches? Don't really know?
Our Forgey/Forgy & Forgie surname project is inching forward with a new result this week. We got a result for a Samuel Forgey and Sarah descendant. This line was specifically through their son Jonathon Forgy of Laurens County, SC, and his son Asa. He matched the main group. This line now has a branch tag which is 10 on DYS391. Nice to get a result which matches their paper trail.
I also got a 95 percent confidence match with a confirmed descendant of Andrew Forgey and Anna Roller. Really great news. I would love to compare with them at Gedmatch.
We also got more great news on the Forgey front with a descendant of Andrew Forgy of Maury County, TN matching a descendant of Andrew Forgey and Margaret Reynolds. More confirmation that those lines are related. This will also help us map the Forgey segment position on Chromosome 2. I believe this also suggests that Andrew of Maury County, TN may be a son Alexander Forgey, brother of Andrew Forgey.I heard from a match whose mother was born in Nicaragua this week. Some of her ancestors also came from Granada Nicaragua.
I listened to another session from Jamboree DNA day this week; "How DNA will change the face of Irish Genealogy". The most interesting take aways regarded the ancient Irish genealogies and The People of the British Isles project. DNA might help us link up with others who have confirmed lines of descent which trace back to these ancient genealogies. Regarding the People of the British Isles project and their autosomal DNA data collection, they have been able to use this data to divide Britain into 29 genetically unique populations. These areas were isolated due to geography. In a year to 18 months everyone may be able to compare their results with these sets of results.
I will soon have an Autosomal DNA result to stand in for my Father. My Aunt agreed to test. I took the opportunity to buy a test during Family Tree DNA's Fathers' Day sale. I can't wait to get the results.
Yes, most definately Ancestry uses the names in your matches' trees to determine where you match with DNA. This is no scientific, although the first few generations could easily be correct.
ReplyDeleteThey even have me matching people in the 1600s...much to far back for the atDNA test unless there were multitudes of cousins marrying each other.
It would be wonderful to see where our matches match us on our chromosomes. Then you could use that information to help determine the common ancestor for other matches. As it stands now (and probably forever) you must either upload your Ancestry data to Family Tree DNA and/or to GedMatch. Sadly, this means you need to talk all your Ancestry matches in doing the same!
ReplyDeleteIn order to get a Shared Ancestor Hint, you need two things: you need to be a DNA match to the person and you need to have something that looks like a common ancestor. I say "looks like" because I've had Shared Ancestor Hints that focus on the fact that both of us had "Unknown Williams" in our trees.
ReplyDeleteI'm an adoptee searching for my father. I have set up a tree that uses a few generations of "unknown" to get to people who I *think* might be my ancestors. Some of them are based on shared chromosome segments with their descendants (my matches) and some are based on just seeing the same ancestors too many times to ignore. I hope when people see that my ancestors are connected to me via several generations of "unknown" they understand what I'm doing.
I've learned a lot by constructing DNA trees for adoptees.
Thanks for the comments! It would be so helpful for us to be able to see where the shared DNA is. Otherwise we have no idea exactly what the basis for the match is.
ReplyDeleteFrom experience, I've learned to also be cautious on the reported distant male ancestor on yDNA tests, too. Sometimes they are who the surname members want them to be, too.
ReplyDelete