DNA update

 

In January, I wrote about my plan to figure out my connection with the DNA match who contacted me. During our initial email correspondence she indicated which grandfather on her tree we linked through. Narrowing by location back further in the line that contained that grandfather, at her 3 x great grandparent level the maternal side came from Dorset and the paternal half of the couple came from Ireland. Not knowing where the Irish part of my own family came from, we chose to concentrate on the possibilities in Dorset. There was a problem with Dorset, however. When it came down to the town and village level there were no location matches between our trees. Our people seem to have lived on opposite sides of the county. My plan was to expand my Dorset family tree to include collateral lines; a lot of work since both of my parents had links to the county. The task seemed daunting. It's a task I haven't begun yet.

I really wanted to narrow down the search before I began. Helpfully, Ancestry has tagged the shared DNA I have with my match and her mother to the paternal side of my tree. That means I only need to deal with half of my Dorset links but it adds another wrinkle. The paternal side of my tree is my Cavanagh side, the one that I know must link to Ireland. Apparently my match's 3 x great grandfather came from County Carlow, a finding that added extra interest to the Irish presentations I've seen lately. It seems likely that my Cavanaghs might also have come from that area of Ireland.

Still looking for a short cut, I saw that the match I was investigating had also recently joined my match list on FTDNA. Perhaps using the tools on this site would provide a break through. I knew there were various ways to look at matches on the FTDNA site but wasn't clear how to go about it. That's when I found a blog post about sorting tricks on FTDNA https://whoareyoumadeof.com/blog/ftdna-family-finder-matches-cool-sorting-tricks/  . I eventually found where the matches "in common with" button had been hidden when the FTDNA website was revamped and checked through the matches I had in common with my target match looking for those with family trees. I check out the ones that I was able to access but still found no familiar names but it's a cool tool to use. It would have been even cooler if it had worked for my problem. It seems there are no short cuts. It's time to get serious about sorting and labeling my DNA and family links. Also probably past time to start adding those collateral ancestors to my family tree.