DNA Update

For me, DNA hasn't led to any of those wonderful revelations that are unveiled on shows like Finding Your Roots. But my knowledge of genetic genealogy is increasing and lately I have made some progress with using matches to further my genealogical research.

One thing I am getting a lot of experience with is endogamy. It seems that it proliferates in much of the ancestry that I research.I received a recent email about a match related to a supposed 2nd to 4th cousin match. It looked promising but any match would be back nine generations according to the paper trail. I think I need to look into this further. The email did show some possible connections with the old country which should be helpful.

That's not the only line where endogamy confuses things. The ancestral lines I am tracing go back to some isolated groups where there were limited possibilities when it came to a mate (or mates); groups such as Colonial Americans, and Scots from the Western Isles. My ancestor hunt also includes Acadians which I suspect have their share of intermarriage. Another group that may have been prone to marrying back into a common gene pool were English nonconformists. There are repetitions of the surnames, Strange, Devonshire and Rolls in the nonconformist lineages I pursue. But my DNA news isn't all about the strange matches that endogamy brings.

DNA Facebook groups were a bit of a bust for my lines at first. Recently, my name actually showed up as a GEDmatch match on a post on the Irish DNA Registry on Facebook. There were Irish locations listed! Can this be the break that helps me get my Cavanagh family out of London back to where they came from? That remains to be seen.