My cousin, Cindy, has tested at AncestyDNA. Cindy’s father is my mother’s brother, so her maternal side matches on my maternal side. Cindy’s results are important, because she will match relatives in different ways than my family will. Cindy’s father and my mother both inherited 50% of their DNA from each parent. However, they inherited a different 50%. That means that one child represents 50% of the parents’ DNA, but two children would represent about 75% of each of their parents’ original DNA.
My Cousin Cindy’s Tree
Here is Cindy’s tree starting with her great-grandparents:
I’m mostly interested in the top part of Cindy’s tree as that is where we match. While writing this Blog, I found this high school photo of Cindy’s dad:
Cindy’s AutoClustering
AutoClustering takes Cindy’s matches at Ancestry and groups them together by how they match each other. These groups or clusters represent common areas of Cindy’s ancestry. I did a basic autoclustering for Cindy and came up with this:
I used pretty narrow parameters for Cindy. These are matches between 40 and 250 cM. That means I filtered out close and far away matches. I took out most of Cindy’s match names on the top and left of the chart.
Cindy’s Six Clusters
Who are these people in Cindy’s six clusters? I recognize people in the last 4 clusters. Those are Cindy’s paternal side matches:
Clusters 3 and 4
I’ll take these together because there is a link between the two clusters shown as a gray square between the red and purple clusters. Carolyn and Kathy are in the red Cluster 3. I have been in touch with Carolyn and know how she is related. Elise, Matthew and Joshua are in Cluster 4 in purple. Kathy from Cluster 3 matches Matthew of Cluster 4. However, I don’t have trees for Kathy or Matthew. I have been in touch with Joshua.
Carolyn descends from the Nicholson/Ellis Line. Joshua descends from the Lentz/Nicholson Line.
Cindy’s Clusters 5 and 6
I can’t figure out how Cluster 5 fits in. Cluster 5 has the lowest level DNA matches. That makes it difficult to tell who the common ancestors are or where they come from.
Cluster 6 fits in with Cindy’s German/Latvian heritage. Cindy’s top match in Cluster 6 is with Otis. Here is how Cindy and Otis match:
The Schwechheimr and Gangnus families lived in a German Colony in Latvia called Hirschenhof. Here is a map of Hirchenhof where Cindy’s Latvian ancestors lived:
Clusters 1 and 2 on Cindy’s Maternal Side
Cindy matches Holly in Cluster 1. Holly also has a tree:
My guess is that Holly’s Heinrich Nachbar is the same as Cindy’s Henry Nachbar. That should put Cindy and Holly at 2nd cousins once removed.
Cluster 2
In Cluster 2, there is one grandparent remaining for Cindy. That is DiOrio. Cindy matches Vincent in Cluster 6 who has this tree:
Vincent’s Etore seems to match Cindy’s Ettore DiOrio. That would make Cindy and Vincent 2nd cousins.
Cindy’s Cluster Summary
For the No idea Cluster 5, I can only tell that it is on Cindy’s paternal side. Cindy’s match with Otis in Cluster 6 went back to the late 1700’s. Cindy’s matches in Cluster 5 were smaller than her matches with Cluster 6 members. That implies that the common ancestors could be further back in time.
Summary and Conclusions
- I ran an autocluster report for my first cousin, Cindy at conservative settings and got six clusters
- Cindy’s six clusters sorted themselves into two maternal clusters and 4 paternal clusters. This was probably a coincidence, but worked out well.
- I was able to figure out all of Cindy’s clusters except for one of her paternal clusters.
- Cindy hasn’t linked an Ancestry Tree to her DNA. If she did, then Ancestry would make some of these connections automatically.