Follow up to DNA Case Study/ Can I at least Confidently name the segments?

I've been continuing to research the Campbell family in Greene County, Tennessee based on the obituary for Eleanor Campbell. She might have been a niece of my brickwall ancestor Sarah "Sally" Campbell born about 1811 likely somewhere in Tennessee according to her daughter. I've been searching at Ancestry.com, and researching the digitized deed books and probate records at FamilySearch. So far I haven't been able to find anything linking my Sarah to Greene County, TN, or Eleanor for that matter. Maybe eventually a bible record may surface or there are courthouse records that haven't been digitized? In the meantime I wonder if I can at least confidently mark the DNA segments from our Greene County, TN matches as coming from Campbell on my Genome Mate Pro segment map? I do have segments I can confidently attribute to lines such as my Browning line. 

In order to have confidence in which ancestors these segments can be attributed to I first needed to make sure these matches didn't match my Mother on more than one line. Since my Mother is closer generation wise to Sarah Campbell-Wray I'm using her match results to establish who these segments came from?

Since AncestryDNA, 23andMe, MyHeritage, and FTDNA all predicted with some confidence that the Greene County, TN Campbell matches descended from George Lafayette Campbell, were 4th cousins to my mother I feel I only need to establish the segments came from ancestors going back to her 3rd or 4th Great-Grandparents on her Campbell line. 

I began to suspect Benjamin Browning, a brother of our ancestor Nathan Browning, may have fathered George Lafayette Campbell? He remained in Greene County, Tennessee whereas my Nathan Browning was already in Indiana when George was born. This would make most of George's descendants 4th cousins once removed of my Mother. Sarah Campbell was my mother's 2nd Great-Grandmother. Her parents would have been 3rd Great-Grandparents making any matches through them her 4th cousins.. 

I have a number of Browning segments confidently marked at Genome Mate Pro and none are shared with the Greene County, TN Campbells. To try to eliminate a possible relationship through the Browning family I marked all my mother's matches through Browning at Ancestry, then went back and looked at shared matches with the Campbell matches just to make sure none were shared? 

I was surprised at how consistently correct matches in the 4th cousin range at Ancestry were. They were right over 90% of the time. Since there are removals some of these cousins can end up as distant 5th to 7th cousins.

Going through the relevant matches, and looking at shared matches, I haven't found any related to the Browning family. Since I haven't worked on grouping matches, other than the Brownings, you don't see any groups listed with the Campbell matches below. 

What I did discover is one of these Greene County, TN matches shares Sarah Campbell-Wray as an ancestor through her daughter Charlotte Temple Wray. This match doesn't share any of the other Campbell matches with my mother even though they are all descended from George L. Campbell? I assume that's because they are distant cousins and share different segments with my Mother, and no longer share enough DNA with each other to match. (I'm also assuming that matches that are shared consistently between these families share the same segments. It would certainly help to know which chromosome the segments are on to verify that.)

Another way to establish which line these segments came from would be to compare the segments with other descendants of Sarah Campbell and her husband Anderson Wray. That way you can eliminate other routes of inheritance. Unfortunately their son William died in the Civil War and a couple of their daughters died young also. Other than my Mother's Great-Grandmother Elizabeth Wray-Forgey only two other daughters lived long enough to leave children. 

The easiest way to find matches who share Anderson Wray and Sarah Campbell as ancestors is to look at Thrulines at AncestryDNA. Since Sarah died young Anderson remarried and had more children with his 2nd wife. Looking at matches listed with Anderson Wray I have to be careful that they descend from Sarah. The only descendants I could confirm are descendants of Charlotte Temple Wray-Estep, one of Sarah's daughters. 

I then looked for these Thruline matches, and their shared  matches, at all of the other companies that share segment information. I was able to find a match at MyHeritage descended through another daughter of Sarah's name Polly Thurman Wray-Hall. She had a segment on chromosome 18 like the Greene County, TN Campbell matches. The segments didn't overlap however. This segment appears to come from the Wray side of the family. 

I had marked segments on chromosome 18 as likely from the Wray line and not the Campbell line on my Genome Mate Pro segment map. This worried me because the segments were close together. Our Wray family crossed paths with the Campbells just like the Brownings did. The Wrays, like some say the Campbells also, originally settled in Virginia. 

I decided to collect up more matches with segments on chromosome 18 since that one related to the problem I'm working on. The tip end of chromosome 18 seemed to relate to the Greene County, TN  Campbell family while the rest appear to be related to the Wray line. There is some overlapping which made me think of the possibility all of 18 related to the Wray family?

A positive factor in favor of chromosome 18 being split between Wray and Campbell is the fact matches on 18 don't always match each other. The matches on the tip end all descend from George Lafayette Campbell of Greene County, TN, whereas the longer segment matches to the left all match each other and share only Wray ancestors. So some of this overlapping may include false positive areas? My Mother's parents came from completely different ethnic backgrounds so I don't have the problem of separating matches from the same places. My maternal Grandmother was Nicaraguan. I don't believe overlapping is related to a segment misattributed to my Mother's father's line.   

Generally most of the Greene County, TN Campbell matches line up as expected on the far right tip, example below. 

This example below shows one small orange colored segment belonging to a Campbell match fitting like a puzzle piece next to larger Wray line matching segments. 

I can confidently name the segments to the left of the Campbell segments as coming from our Wray family line. 

I decided to confirm that the Wray family and Campbell family matches didn't match each other. Since some of these matches had a kit at FTDNA I was able to use the Matrix tool. Below you see a Wray match on Chromosome 18, GA, compared to George Lafayette Campbell descendants. All of the Campbell descendants match each other as expected, but don't match the Wray descendants who all share segments on chromosome 18. 

With more than a dozen matches now shared with Greene County, TN Campbells I have not found these matches associated with any other families of ours. Some share small segments on chromosome 18 but others also share larger overlapping segments on chromosomes 8, 5, and 12. The latter segments have not presented a problem with any other matches' segments overlapping with them. The segments on chromosome 18 are all shared by the descendants of two of George Lafayette Campbell's daughters. That would be about half a dozen matches. I'm leaning towards believing these segments are Campbell, and came from our ancestor Sarah Campbell. 

I'll keep collecting matches on these segments. I believe I'm on the right track, at least I haven't been proven wrong yet? I'm definitely open to any information that surfaces even if I'm proven wrong. 

Final thoughts 

Comparing with matches who tested at 4 different companies is challenging. All of the companies have different tools and some are better than others. I wish there was one company with good tools, trees, and a large database of matches to compare with. At this point we have to jump around between companies because, for instance, Ancestry has better trees and Thrulines, while other companies offer segment information. 23andMe and MyHeritage give you predictions regarding how shared matches are related to each other. Knowing how matches are related to each other helps to group them with families. From a list of shared matches this match below is a 3rd cousin to my mother and the father of this match. 

Sometimes close relatives, even siblings, test with different companies and in that case their relationship isn't apparent unless you can compare them at GEDmatch. We have to somehow pull all of the information from all of these sources together which is time consuming. As things stand now genetic genealogy is mainly for those with time to devote to learning about all of the different tools and navigating between companies. If you're looking to test with one company in order to solve a brickwall out past a 2nd Great-Grandparent's generation you are unlikely to do that at one company. 

A DNA Case Study/ Plus Would Sharing the Chromosome Number be Possible?

I've been working on trying to break down a brickwall by using atDNA match chart. I got that idea from the RootsTech session by that called "Organize Your DNA Matches in a Diagram". 

A couple weeks ago I found important information that might help lead me to a resolution of the Campbell brickwall. My only confirmed Campbell ancestor is Sarah "Sally" Campbell. She was born about 1811 (according to a daughter Polly Wray Hall her mother was born in Tennessee). She was married to Anderson Wray in Jackson County, Indiana. 

A James T. Campbell lived near the family in Indiana. I believe, based on his age, he might be Sarah Campbell-Wray's brother. I've been researching James and his family. I did discover that the family came from East Tennessee based on a death certificate but I hadn't found any other information on him. The recent find regarding this family was an obituary for an Eleanor Campbell referred to as a sister on a census and daughter by descendants. I don't know which is correct? I do know they are related because James is always recorded as being born in Tennessee on census records and they share the same last name. James T. Campbell was in Indiana by the mid 1830s whereas Eleanor said she came to Indiana in 1846. 

Eleanor F. Campbell's obituary gives her birth place as Greene County, Tennessee. 

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Even before finding this information I was leaning towards believing my Sarah might be from there. My mother has a number of atDNA matches descended from a George Lafayette Campbell of Greene County, Tennessee. I have not been able to find any other surnames in common or places in common with these matches. The families of these matches migrated from Greene County, TN to Alabama and Texas. All of my Mother's paternal ancestors had arrived in Indiana prior to 1840 and remained in the Midwest.

A problem I have is that I have other ancestors from Greene County, Tennessee. My ancestor Roger Browning migrated to that area in the 1790's. His second wife Elizabeth's maiden name isn't known so it's possible these matches match us through her family?

I knew my mother had a number of matches who descended from George Lafayette Campbell but didn't know exactly how many or how they were related to each other until I created the chart below. 

Charting each match descended from George Lafayette Campbell and Susannah Kaiser provided some very helpful information which has allowed me to find even more matches through this couple. I used the additional surnames of descendants to find matches that may not have their tree traced back far enough. I was then able to collect up segments for those who tested with companies who offer a chromosome browser. 

These matches shared DNA on chromosome 5, 12, and 18. Some of my mother's matches share a very large segment on chromosomes 8 & 12. There are false positive regions on both of these chromosomes  according to Genome Mate Pro. I believe that is why they predict these cousins are more closely related? 

Ancestry and 23andMe are pretty insistent that several of these cousins are 3rd or 4th cousins of my Mother. I believe they are at least 5th cousins probably with removals? George Lafayette Campbell's father was James M. Campbell born about 1800. The man I think might be my Sarah Campbell-Wray's brother is also named James and he was born about 1811. I doubt they would have been brothers with the same first name. They would most likely have been cousins. If they were cousins then my Mother would be at least a 5th cousin with removals. If the relationship is instead through Roger Browning's wife they would still be in the 5th cousin range possibly with removals?

Below you see AncestryDNA predicts chances are only 2% that one of these Campbell matches is a 5th cousin. 

When I clicked on the question mark next to the same matches name at MyHeritage a chart with the predicted possible relationship comes up. They don't give a percentage of the likelihood for each possible relationship. I believe the chart should have extended to 6th cousin or 5th cousin once removed? More research may prove I'm wrong about the relationship? 

A chart predicting the relationship of another match from the same family at 23andMe. They are predicting the match is a 4th cousin, and not extending the possibility the match is a 5th cousin. 

I noticed while making the chart two Campbell sisters married two Morton brothers. The growing list of matches with descendants from this one family all seem to come from the same 3 siblings Nancy Elvira Campbell, Mary Adeline Campbell, and James Wallace Campbell. 

Looking at the chart it's also interesting to see all of the matches are separated from George Lafayette and his wife Susannah by the same number of generations, except for one.

Going through matches on the same chromosomes I've found other families with the surname Campbell matching on the same segments as George Lafayette Campbell and Susannah's children. I'm not sure if that is a coincidence or these segments have been passed down in Campbell families for generations?

I believe it looks promising that these matches are related through the Campbell line. I need more documentation to prove it however. 

Would Sharing the Chromosome Number be Possible? 

Mapping the chromosomes of our Campbell brickwall matches has been very helpful. It has helped me confirm that segments have been passed down through this family because they are overlapping. It's also helped me find more matches through the same couple. 

I know AncestryDNA will never have a chromosome browser but I had heard they might share which chromosomes segments are shared on? Knowing the chromosomes segments are shared on would be helpful to me and others I'm sure. If I have distant cousins sharing DNA on the same chromosome that would suggest the segment could have come from the same source. 

The trees attached to DNA matches at AncestryDNA are very useful but without segment information the results aren't very useful when trying to connect with distant cousins. Many people share more than one couple with a match. The location of the segments is the only way to tell which couple a segment or segments came from. 

I may be mistaken about AncestryDNA planning on adding the segment chromosome numbers? It would be extremely helpful if they could do that though. The trees have helped identify my Campbell matches ancestors but there was no way to tell if the shared matches' segments came from the same ancestor? Additional segment information at AncestryDNA would help.