Wednesday, August 18, 2021

One More Common Ancestor for an FTDNA Match Found!

 Descendancy research will solve many DNA Match problems, but usually it has to find living descendants of the common ancestor.  That presents a problem because no online family trees show living descendants.  

I solved one more common ancestor problem today because of my descendancy research.  Here is a description of it so that I can protect living persons (using anonymized initials):

1)  FamilyTreeDNA improved its matching algorithms, eliminated under-6 cM segments, and changed their website look and feel.  See https://blog.familytreedna.com/updates-to-family-finder-matching-and-chromosome-painter/.  

2)  In working in FTDNA today, I found that the top autosomal DNA match was a person  ABC, with 67 cM.  Hmm, I wondered who else on my match list he was ICW (In Common With), so I clicked on that and the top match was DEF, who was #2 on my list at 61 cM (and one of the few FTDNA matches that I know a common ancestor for).  I match ABC with 17 cM on chromosome 8, 34 cM on chromosome 11, and 16 cM on chromosome 20.  I match DEF with 19 cM on chromosome 2, 32 cM on chromosome 6, and 10 cM on chromosome 20.  ABC and DEF match me on chromosome 20 in essentially the same location.  Here is the FTDNA chromosome map with ABC (in blue) and DEF (in red):

3)  I know from earlier research that DEF's common ancestors with me were my 2nd great-grandparents, James Richman and Hannah Rich who migrated from Wiltshire to New England in 1856.  I figured it was likely that these were the 2nd great-grandparents of ABC also.  ABC had a 4 person tree on FTDNA with everyone but him private, so that was no help.

4)  Over the past several years, I have added many descendants of my 4th great-grandparents to my RootsMagic family tree using classical genealogy research, and really worked hard on the Richman/Richmond and Rich families.

5)  I looked in my RootsMagic file to see if I could find a descendant of my 2nd great-grandparents with the surname C and easily found BAC and his wife.  Could that be ABC's parents?

6)  I looked at the Web Hints for BAC and saw that he had a Newspapers.com obituary, so I clicked through and saw that his obituary listed six children, and the first one was ABC.  Cool!

7)  A Google search for ABC found a professional biography, some people finder links, a birth date and birth place, an address, a phone number, and more.  

In summary, I solved a DNA match problem, can add ABC to my chromosome painting on DNA Painter, and found six more living 3rd cousins!  Descendancy research works!  Chromosome browsers help!

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Copyright (c) 2021, Randall J. Seaver

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2 comments:

Debbie V. said...

Hi Randy,
I am curious about what you use to track your genealogy "activities" or research or whatever that you post here - which I find pretty interesting. I'm recently retired so excited to have time to spend doing these things.
Is it something I can take a look at or just your own system?
Debbie V.

Bill said...

Great story! Why oh why can’t Ancestry, where I have a dozen or more known common ancestor matches for every 2nd ggp offer Chromosome matching and painting? That would enable SO much more detective capability on the no tree and other matches.