Finally, Triangulation Groups for the James Frazer Line of Roscommon County, Ireland

Recently, Kathy from the James Line of our Frazer DNA Project notified me that her Aunt Madeline had been tested for DNA and would I look at the results? I will take a look at the results in this Blog. Here is where Madeline fits in on the James Line Tree. She is on the second row from the bottom and the 3rd box from the left.

Above, the James Line Descendants that tested their DNA are in red. So now there are 14 people that have tested. There is one person below Clyde on the bottom left that I don’t show. I don’t analyze the children of people that have tested their DNA because they got all their DNA from their parents. Betty hasn’t uploaded her results to Gematch.  As a result, I am comparing 11 people to each other on the James Line.

Let’s Triangulate

First, I’ll say that I won’t bother triangulating Charlotte, Madeline and Mary. That triangulation would only point to the parents of Charlotte and Madeline and they already know who their parent are. Plus one of their parents is not a Frazer.

Chromosome 2

Here are the matches that Madeline has on Chromosome 2:

Madeline’s sister Charlotte is #1 in red. Notice a large match. Madeline’s niece Mary is #2. As expected, the matches are smaller and more broken up, but still fairly large. #3 is my 2nd cousin, Paul. He is actually on the Archibald line, but I believe that he and I have some James Line ancestors that haven’t been identified. Paul has a very small pink match with Madeline and Charlotte and another fairly small blue match with Madeline, Charlotte, and Mary.

I won’t go down to the pink level at this time but will look at Paul’s blue match. Even that is below the normal gedmatch.com threshold of 7 cM. In order for this to be a true triangulation group, Paul would also have to match Charlotte and Mary. And Charlotte and Mary would have to match each other. Paul’s blue match is at position 174 to 178M on the image above. We already know that Charlotte and Mary match each other in that region.

Here are Paul’s matches with Charlotte:

Note that on Chromosome 2 where we wanted him to match Charlotte (around 175M). he doesn’t. At least not down to 4 cM and 400 SNPs. This match does appear to be in Paul’s pink match area that we didn’t consider.

Just to make sure, I will see if Paul matches Mary.

Here there are no matches at Chromosome 2, so I would say there is not a triangulation group there and Paul’s match with Madeline was by chance. Let’s move on to another Chromosome.

chromosome 4

Again, the top 2 matches to Madeline are her sister Charlotte and her niece. #3 is Clydie (also known as Clyde). #4 is my sister Heidi, but we won’t consider that match right now. Here is how Cyldie matches Charlotte:

Unfortunately, there is no match on Chromosome 4. Again, there is no match between Clydie and Charlotte’s niece, so no triangulation at Chromosome 4:

chromosome 5 – Two TGs

1. Mary
2. Charlotte
3. Bonnie
4. Judith
5. Jane (from the Archibald Line. I’ll ignore this small match for now.)

Here is more TG potential with Bonnie and Judith, both of whom have a paper trail on the James Frazer Line. From previous testing, Charlotte and Bonnie match in the area of Chromosome 5 that we are interested in:

Here we have our first James Line only TG. This means that Madeline, Charlotte and Bonnie all have a common ancestor. It would be tempting to think that this DNA comes from James Frazer:

However, there are other possibilities. We don’t know the spouse of Archibald Frazer born around 1792. That could be area of the match. Alternatively, one of the genealogies could be wrong.

Next, let’s look at Judith’s small match. Here is where she matches Charlotte:

Here is how our new Chromosome 5 TG could look:

Again, there are other possibilities. Note that Charlotte and Madeline are 5th cousins to Judith – assuming we have the chart right. Also, taken together, these 2 TGs infer a common ancestor between Charlotte, Madeline, Mary, Bonnie and Judith.

Chromosome 6

1. Charlotte
2. Mary
3. Jonathan
4. Janet

Here is the comparison between Jonathan and Charlotte:

So this does not look promising for triangulating. I compared Mary and Jonathan – no match there either. As Jonathan and Janet are siblings, there should be no match between Janet and Charlotte or Janet and Mary.

Chromosome 7 – a non-James Line TG?

Above are Madeline’s matches with Charlotte, Mary and Bill from the Archibald Line. It appears that Madeline, Charlotte and Bill are in a small TG. Bill has a small match with Madeline right at the area that he needs to (from position 127 to 130M) in order to form a TG.

TG at Chromosome 10

Here are Madeline’s matches with her close relatives Mary and Charlotte, and her matches with her more distant relatives Jonathan and Janet. It looks like there should be a TG between Madeline, Mary, Jonathan and Janet.

Here I don’t even have to lower the Gedmatch thresholds for the match between Mary and Jonathan:

The match between Mary and Janet is slightly smaller at 9.0 cM. This is another case where Madeline has tipped the scales and resulted in another TG.

Chromosome 12

Above is the representation of Madeline’s matches with Mary, Charlotte and Prudence. Let’s look for a match between Charlotte and Prudence:

They do have a good match right where we need them to to form a TG. This is an important TG as it adds a new line:

On paper, Charlotte and Madeline are 4th cousins with Prudence. The Edward Frazer Line is well documented, so this supports the genealogy that links Charlotte and Madeline up through Archibald Frazer and Catherine Peyton.

Chromosome 15

 

As usual, Madeline is matching with Charlotte and Mary. The next 2 blue segments represent Madeline matching siblings Jonathan and Joanna. If Joanna and Charlotte match, that will be one TG. They do:

Now, we need to check if Jonathan matches Charlotte and Mary. He doesn’t match Charlotte on Chromosome 15:

Chances are, he won’t match Mary here either. I checked and he didn’t. This is why it pays to check each connection. From the Chromosome Browser above, it looked like Jonathan could be in a TG, but only his sister Joanna was.

Chromosomes 16-22 only have matches between Madeline, Charlotte and Mary.

The X Chromosome

The X Chromosome can be confusing as the male only inherits an X Chromosome from his mother. The female inherits and X from both parents. That means where there are 2 male Frazers in a line of inheritance, the X cannot represent a Frazer match. That is, unless there is intermarriage of the Frazers. Just to show I’m not afraid of being confused, here are Madeline’s matches on the X Chromosome:

As above, I’ll ignore the small pink matches. The first 2 of Madeline’s matches are again Charlotte and Mary. The 2 yellow matches belong to my sisters Sharon and Heidi. In the past, I have explained these by an unknown Frazer in my ancestry that is likely in the James Line. #8 is Bonnie. #10 is Clydie. This is an interesting match because it is almost 20 cM. Also Clydie does not have 2 Frazers in a row in her ancestry until before William Fitzgerald Frazer and Margaret Graham. This means that Madeline, Charlotte and Clydie could have a Graham in common or perhaps an ancestor of Margaret Graham in common.

Summary of the Five New TGs

Here is the summary of the new James Line TGs not including the X Chromosome:

The numbers in the top right are the Chromosomes where the James Line TGs are. The names in the bottom left indicate the likely common ancestor(s) for the TGs. For simplicity, I left out the new TGs that had James and Archibald Line people in them.

Summary and Conclusions

• The addition of Madeline to the James Line DNA Test Group tipped the scales and resulted in previously unknown TGs for the James Line.
• Out of the 11 people, considered, 9 were in James Line TGs.
• The newest member of our James Line DNA Group, Madeline, was in the most TGs: four
• Charlotte helped form 3 new TGs
• Even though Mary is a niece of Madeline and Charlotte, she also helped form 3 new TGs
• Bonnie, Judith, Jonathan, Janet, Prudence and Joanna were each in one new TG
• The 2 that weren’t in TGs were Clydie and Beverly. However, Clydie was in an X Chromosome TG. Beverly shows as a 3rd cousin to Bonnie and Judith. As a result, her relationships can be inferred through them.
• These new TGs add certainty to the relatedness of those on the James Line.