Dicks DNA Triangulation Explosion

In my last Blog, Unraveling Some of the Dicks Family DNA from Newfoundland, I looked at several things:

• I found many descending from Christopher Dicks b. 1784 from Newfoundland
• These people had also tested their DNA
• 6 of these had also uploaded their results to gedmatch where I was able to analyze their DNA
• Out of these 6 all were found to be in Triangulation Groups (TGs)
• TGs are good things as they indicate a common ancestor
• As all these people descended from Christopher Dicks b. 1784, I took him to be that common ancestor that the triangulated DNA pointed to.

I was a bit surprised at how successful the exercise was. Christopher Dicks helped me out a bit by fathering so many children. This has resulted in the spread of his DNA through many descendants to triangulate with each other.

Two of my goals in the previous Blog, were:

1. to find other Dicks descendants who had uploaded their DNA to gedmatch that I may have missed, and;
2. to find other Dicks descendants who hadn’t uploaded their DNA to gedmatch, but would be interested in doing so.

Within one day of writing my blog, I have easily found one person in each category above.  The person in the first category is Judy. Another goal I had was to try to find more Dicks Family Genealogies for those that had uploaded to gedmatch. That happened also when I heard from Marilyn.

This study group works best for people in both these categories:

1. Those who have an ancestry going back to the early Newfoundland Dicks family
2. Those who have tested their DNA and have uploaded their results to gedmatch.com.

Judy and Marilyn’s Dicks Genealogies

Judy is someone I missed in the last Blog. She is a little further down on the Dicks Relationship Chart and further down on my Aunt Esther’s DNA match list at gedmatch.com. However, her results are important nonetheless. I was surprised that the 6 Dicks descendants from the last blog all triangulated. I was equally surprised that I found Judy to be in 4 triangulation groups. In the previous blog, I only found 5 triangulation groups with the 6 people I looked at.  This speaks to the importance of having many in a DNA study group.

First, here is one of my favorite photos of Harbour Buffet, Newfoundland where some of my wife’s ancestors came from and where many in the Dicks family lived. It looks quite peaceful, but I know that many hearty souls lived there and many drowned at sea.

Here is the tree for Judy and Marilyn. The tree is starting to get bigger, so I only have the Rachel Dicks and Robert Dicks Lines. Note that Marilyn is in twice. This is because she had Dicks relatives that married. This is not that unusual. For my Frazer family in Ireland, there were many in this situation. Marilyn and I wondered why the match between her and my wife’s Aunt Esther was so high. This is because Marilyn and Esther both have Dicks in their ancestry more than once. I wrote a blog on this subject for my own Frazer family here.

Judy and Marilyn are 4th cousins, once removed to my mother in law Joan and 3rd cousins twice removed to my wife’s Aunt Esther. That means that through their common ancestor of Christopher Dicks, Judy and Marilyn have a better than 30% chance of matching with the people on Joan’s row and a 50% chance or better of matching those on Esther’s row. They are 5th cousins to each other. This usually indicates about a 10% chance of matching each other. Here are the match probabilities as posted by FTDNA:

Here is the whole chart with Marilyn added:

Let’s Re-Triangulate – Chromosome 2 TG

This one is a bit tricky. It looks like 2 TGs.

Sandra and Nelson are in both TGs. Joan is in TG 2A and Molly is in TG 2B. Kenneth and Judy didn’t make the cut. They likely match on a non-Dicks Line – probably the Miller line.

I hope that the chart above looks sufficiently confusing! Judy and Kenneth don’t triangulate but both descend from George Miller in blue above.

tg – chromosome 4

2 TG’s – chromosome 12 – Hold on to your seats

Here at Chromosome 12, a few interesting things are going on.

• First, there are 2 TGs: TG 12A and 12B. Sandra and Nelson don’t match the 1st TG. That means that they must have gotten that segment of their DNA from their non-Dicks side.
• Secondly, note that these 2 TGs overlap each other from about position 107 to 120.
• Even though these 2 TGs, overlap, they have different people in each. That means that they must both have separate common ancestors.
• Wallace, Judy and Kenneth are in a TG, but the common ancestor would be George Miller. The reason I say this is that as mentioned above, the 2 TGs overlap. In the Miller Line TG 12A, there is no match with Esther, Joan and Molly in TG 12B. If there was a match, then TG 12A would have Rebecca Joyce as a common ancestor.
• Esther, Joan and Molly are in TG 12B. But does this TG go through Molly’s Dicks/Joyce Line or Dicks/Cran Line? This is assumed to be a Dicks TG.

I was actually looking for a TG between Judy, Wallace, and Kenneth and here is where it showed itself.

TG 14

This TG had Marilyn, Joan and Esther again. This would be expected due to the double Dicks ancestry that Marilyn and Esther both have. See the above diagram with the pink lines.

2 TG’s – Chromosome 15

Here again, there are 2 TGs. However, they are not overlapping TGs like the ones at Chromosome 12. The first one, TG 15A has Nelson, Kenneth and Judy. TG 15B Has Judy, Wallace and Joan.  Esther is not in either TG. Where she matches with Joan likely represents Upshall DNA.

TG 16

Here is a 4 person TG.

Some of the ambiguity of Marilyn’s TGs may be resolved by finding other Dicks descendants that have tested for DNA and comparing their results to these TGs.

Finally TG 19

This TG was mentioned in the previous blog. Now it is bigger with 4 people – including Wallace’s niece Judy.

Summary of the New and Augmented TGs

It turned out that this update was longer than the original Blog – at least for the triangulating part. In the previous blog, there were 5 TGs indicating Christopher Dicks b. 1784 and his wife Margaret. Now there are 13 TGs. This gets to the triangulation explosion that I mentioned in the title.

• TG12A likely represents a non-Dicks ancestor on the Joyce Line: George Miller. This is represented in a different color. However, this is good to know for those in this TG as matches in this area of Chromosome 12 will be along Miller ancestry and not Dicks ancestry.
• Marilyn is represented in a different shade of green as we don’t know which line her TG’s are from. All the TGs that Marilyn are in appear to indicate her common ancestor of Christopher Dicks. We just aren’t sure which path the DNA took at this time.
• This is also an issue for Esther where she is in a TG that her 1/2 niece Joan is not in. For the 2 TGs that Esther is in and Joan is not, the TG is with descendants of Elizabeth b. 1809, so that would be a possibility for the line of the Dicks ancestor with the unknown parents on Esther’s maternal side. As Esther’s maternal Dicks ancestor’s ancestry is not known, that line is not represented on the Dicks family tree chart.
• Joan is in the most TGs which is a bit surprising as she is a 1/2 niece of Esther. based on this I would think she would have 1/2 or less of the matches of Esther as Esther has 2 known Dicks ancestors and Joan has one.

So far, triangulating the Dicks descendants DNA has been hugely successful. With the results of only 8 descendants, we have 13 TGs. All but one of these TGs point back to Christopher Dicks b. 1784 or his wife Margaret.

For comparison, I head up another DNA project with 27 that have tested their DNA. 9 of them have multiple Frazer ancestors and there are fewer TGs in that project than in this one. Part of the reason for that is that many of the Frazer relationships are more distant than what we have with the Dicks family.