It seems like AncestryDNA is best suited for AutoClustering. Which is good, because many people have tested at AncestryDNA. In my previous Blog, I autoclustered my brother Jon. I was able to cross-reference his clusters to ones I had found for myself. In some cases there was no cross-reference. In some cases, my brother’s clusters helped identify my own clusters. In this Blog, I’ll look at my sister Heidi’s clusters at Ancestry.
Heidi’s Clusters look like this:
I have left out the names on the top and left for privacy. I like using 600 cM for a top limit and 25 cM for a bottom limit. For Heidi, this gives her 23 clusters. Heidi has 403 4th cousins or closer. My brother Jon has 381 4th cousins or closer at AncestryDNA and he had 20 clusters using the same upper and lower match limits that I used for Heidi.
Nigel – a Non-Clustered Match
First, I’ll mention Nigel. He is the first one on the AutoCluster Report who is mentioned as not being clustered. I think that this is significant. Nigel matches Heidi at 66 cM. This is a very high match for a 5th cousin once removed. Here is the Shared Ancestry Hint between Nigel and Heidi:
The match is high for our family, but not with other descendants of this couple. As a result, Nigel and Heidi are not in a cluster.
Clusters By the Numbers
By this, I mean that I like to look at the highest matched clusters first. These are easiest to identify. Cluster 1 has the most people in it and the closest matches. This is because I have a lot of second cousins from my prolific Hartley/Snell great grandparents.
Heidi’s Clusters 1, 14 and 7
Here Heidi’s results are below and my brother Jon’s are above. What is interesting is that the top matches in Heidi’s and Jon’s first clusters are the same. However, for the Taylor match, the clusters point to different grandparent lines. This could partially be because Taylor is the daughter of our first cousin. Taylor matches us on both maternal grandparent lines.
Here is a tree with Nigel who I mentioned above:
Taylor is Cindy’s daughter. I find it interesting that there is a Cluster 14 and 7. Cluster 7 is Nicholson, but not Lentz. Cluster 14 is Nicholson and Lentz, but as Cluster 7 is already Nicholson, does this mean that Cluster 14 favors the Lentz side?
Heidi’s Clusters 10, 5 and 2
Heidi already has more maternal clusters than my brother Jon. Gladys is an interesting match. The common ancestors between Gladys and me were both Frazer’s. From what I can tell two first cousin Frazer’s married each other.
Heidi’s Next Three Clusters – More Obscure?
One would expect the clusters to represent more obscure common ancestors as the match levels go down.
Here are the common ancestors for one of the people in Cluster 15 (William McMaster and Margaret Frazer):
This goes back to about 1790, so back to my 4th great-grandparents.
Here are my Parker/Hatch 4th great-grandparents:
They lived in Nantucket and Isaac had a whaling boat repair business there.
Cluster 9 goes into a black hole where I am stuck. This is likely on my Clarke or Spratt Line. Cluster 9 is also Heidi’s 9th cluster by size and already I am getting stuck identifying the ancestors.
That makes sense, though, because Jane Spratt above is my 2nd great-grandmother and I don’t know who her parents were. Two more generations out from Spratt would result in 3 new surnames that I don’t know about (or could only make guesses at).
Heidi’s Clusters 16, 17 and 18
These next three clusters came in order:
Anthony Snell is interesting as he fought in the US Revolutionary War. I don’t have specific common ancestors for Clusters 17 and 18. This brings us past the halfway point for Heidi’s clusters.
More Clusters for Heidi – The Brick Wall Zone
The bottom clusters for Heidi should be in the area where I am stuck on the genealogical paper trail side.
The question marks show that I am not sure who the common ancestors are for the above clusters. I have done some work on Heidi’s Cluster 21 matches. Here is my best shot at finding common ancestors at Cluster 21:
Here are the rest of the clusters:
In my brother Jon’s clusters, I only saw two maternal clusters out of his 20. Here Heidi has 7 maternal clusters out of her 23.
Here is how Heidi’s clusters compare with my brother Jon’s:
10 out of Heidi’s 23 Clusters had no corresponding cluster with her brother Jon. Two other of Heidi’s clusters (14 and 11) were not a perfect match with one of Jon’s clusters.
Summary and Conclustions
- Heidi had about 30% maternal clusters compared to her brother Jon’s 10% maternal clusters
- It was interesting to look at the specific ancestors that were in the clusters (when I was able to identify them). I was able to identify 10 ancestral couples
- Many of Heidi’s clusters were not equivalent to her brother Jon’s clusters. This means that it is helpful to look at the different results for the different siblings.
- Heidi’s clusters offer another piece of the puzzle in breaking down some of my family’s genalogical brick walls.