Recently, I’ve been playing around with the Leeds Color Method. That is a method where you should be able to put a person’s AncestryDNA matches into four bins or colors. These colors represent your four grandparents. Here are part of the results for my wife’s Aunt Lorraine:
The trick is to get matches that are no closer than 2nd cousins. That is because with 1st cousins, you will match on more than one grandparent. In this Blog, I will be looking at Lorraine’s blue Butler matches. These are the most rare matches – especially compared to all the LeFevre matches.
The First Butler Match: Barbara
I wrote to Barbara this past March, but didn’t hear back. Barbara doesn’t have a tree connected to her DNA, but does have a simple tree at Ancestry:
This tree is good enough to get back to Butler.
Barbara is at the perfect level for a DNA match. She is at the second cousin level. At this level the DNA match is very high and we can isolate the match to one grandparent – in this case Butler. Barbara shows as a potential 2nd cousin by DNA at Ancestry. In fact, she is a 2nd cousin to Lorraine.
The Second Butler Match: Brian
I wrote to Brian, who also has a good DNA match. His sister Mary Lou has an active account with Ancestry, so was kind enough to respond and show me where her family tree was:
This is Brian and Mary Lou’s paternal side of the tree. Lorraine and Brian show as potential third cousins by DNA, so I would think that the connection would be one level higher. However, AncestryDNA does say that the range could be 3rd to 4th cousin. Here is Brian and Mary Lou’s tree with the Butler Line isolated.
Lorraine’s sister Virginia has also tested at AncestryDNA. She shows as a 4th cousin to Brian.
Stitching the Two Butler Families Together
In my Blog from over a year ago I showed this figure:
I was originally hoping that George Butler born 1825 and Edward Butler born 1835 were brothers. However, as George’s parents are believed to be Henry Butler and Ann Russel, they could have been first cousins. This scenario would have Henry and Michael Butler brothers at the top.
This is the best unified tree that I can come up with:
An interesting point from the DNA standpoint is that Pat and Brian only match by DNA on the Butler side.
Do the DNA Results Support the Unified Butler Tree?
Ideally, all of these people would have uploaded their DNA results to Gedmatch.com for comparison. Here are the ones that have their results at Gedmatch:
They are highlighted in green. Nathan is the only one from the George Branch. On the Edward Branch, there are five people at Gedmatch: John, Lorraine, Richard, Virginia and Gaby.
Here is how those six compare to each other at Gedmatch:
Nathan matches Lorraine, Richard and John but not Virginia nor Gaby.
Based on my made up ‘unified’ chart above Nathan would be a fourth cousin twice removed to Lorraine, Richard and Virginia and a fifth cousin once removed to John and Gaby.
Here I have put some statistics in to look at:
This shows average DNA matches and ranges of matches. These numbers seem about right compared to Nathan’s matches. The chances of even matching a 4th cousin are better than 50% and the chances of matching 5th cousin is better than 10% according to FTDNA.
DNA Matching at AncestryDNA
DNA Matching at AncestryDNA is different. They use shared matches and don’t give information on how you match on a specific chromosome. The catch is that AncestryDNA only gives shared matches when it thinks the shared match would be a possible 4th cousin match.
Virginia and Brian’s Shared Matches
Here I show Barbara, Donna and Patty as shared matches to Virginia and Brian along the Butler Line. In the Tree column, that is the relationship they would have in the tree I made that tries to bring the two families together. The ‘Cous’ column is what Ancestry predicts the relationship to be by DNA. The DNA and actualy relationships are pretty close except for Donna. Here is Donna added to the tree:
I should note that not all on the tree have tested at AncestryDNA. However, many have. Nathan and Richard have not to my knowledge.
Lorraine and Brian’s Shared Matches
Here things get a bit more interesting. Lorraine and Brian have the same shared matches as Virginia and Brian, but have two additional shared matches:
They are Kim and Cam. I don’t know who Cam is, but I have been in touch with Kim. I had mentioned Gedmatch to Kim and it looks like she uploaded her results there. Kim is on the George Line, so I’ll add her.
Now I should be able to match Kim with Nathan and the Edward Butler side at Gedmatch.
Kim at Gedmatch and Butler DNA
From the chart above it is clear that Kim and Nathan match only on the Butler side. This is because Nathan is from the Whitty side and Kim is from the Sinnott side. We may say that they are half third cousins once removed. That sounds a bit obscure. Here is their match:
This is the shared DNA that Kim and Nathan both have from George Butler who was born in 1826 in Ireland.
Butler Triangulation on Chromosome 2
Further, Kim matches Richard and Lorraine at about the same place on Chromosome 2:
A triangulation occurs here because Nathan and Kim match here. Also Kim matches Richard and Lorraine here. When this happens, it is most likely that those in the Triangulation Group share a common ancestor.
Here is how I show the Triangulation Group (TG) on the family tree:
This doesn’t prove the configuration that I have above, but it does prove that these families have a common ancestor. Above, if I have drawn the tree correctly, Kim would be a 4th cousin once removed to Lorraine and Richard. It possible to tie families together just using AncestryDNA Shared Matches, but I find using Triangulation at Gedmatch.com to be more precise.
Shared Matches Between Patty, Lorraine and Virginia
Patty is the highest up on the George Butler Line. She should be the best comparison with Lorraine and Virginia who have tested at AncestryDNA.
This adds Harry as a Shared Match who I believe is Donna’s brother on the Edward Butler Line. In addition, we have Mary and ML. They don’t have trees posted at Ancestry, but would appear to have Butler heritage based on the fact that they have shared matches with Lorraine and Patty.
Summary and Conclusions
- I was happy to hear from Brian’s sister who told me that their heritage went back to the George Butler Line from Cincinatti. I had been tracking this line for a while.
- While looking at shared matches I came upon Kim also from the George Butler Line. I found that she had uploaded her DNA to Gedmatch.com.
- When I compared Kim and Nathan at Gedmatch, I get just the DNA from George Butler born 1826. This is because Kim and Nathan descend from two different wives of George. If both Kim and Nathan had descended from the same wife of George, they would share about twice the amount of DNA, but we wouldn’t know if the DNA was from the Butler side or the wife’s side.
- I made a proposed tree that connected the George and Edward Butler Lines.
- This tree seems reasonable given the relationships and level of DNA matches at Gedmatch and AncestryDNA.
- The addition of Kim’s DNA to Gedmatch resulted in a Triangulation Group between Kim, Richard, Lorraine, and Nathan. This TG is a strong indication of a common ancestor. As these four all share Butler ancestry, it would be reasonable to say that the common ancestor is a Butler.