In my previous Blog, I took a shot at looking at my enhanced shared matches. This is a new feature that AncestryDNA has under it’s Pro Tools. As the name suggests, there is a charge associated with the Pro Tools. In my previous Blog, I looked at a few matches on my Hartley side that I was curious about.
In this Blog, I would like to look at a suggestion from Jim Bartlett in his Blog:
1. Work down our Match list. Start at the top, and methodically work on each Match that we haven’t placed in our Tree. The advantage here is that the top Matches (most shared cM) are usually the easiest to figure out. With Pro Tools we can see their top Matches, potentially ones with good Trees, and often tease out their place in our Tree. At the least, even if we cannot find the exact relationship, we can figure out which sub-branch of our Tree they are on (which is all we really need to know for them to be helpful forming a tight group).
This is his Plan of Attack #1 out of 4.
Top Unknown Match
This would have to be Keith:
I recognize the last name. My grandmother had a sister Agnes Lentz whose married name was the same as Keith’s. I have that Agnes had a son named Robert Lester in 1925, but I have no further information on him. Keith’s tree is private. I messaged Keith at Ancestry, but got no response.
This is probably a pretty easy example. The first shared match between Keith and myself is my late mother. She shows as likely 1st cousin twice removed. Now the Robert Lester I mentioned would be my mother’s first cousin. That means that Keith at twice removed could be Robert’s grandson.
As I scroll down my shared match list, I see Mia:
Mia is Keith’s daughter and has an unlinked tree:
Mia has Robert as her paternal great-grandfather. This seems to confirm what I had guessed. I wrote to Mia in the past. She got back to me once but did not follow up apparently. Without the Pro Tools, I would not know that Mia was Robert’s daughter which is helpful.
Keith and Mia are related on my Lentz and Nicholson side. I am having more trouble with the Lentz side, so I will add them to that tree:
Here is the add:
Keith is my 2nd cousin once removed and Mia is my second cousin twice removed. Keith may be helpful in checking out other Lentz matches.
My Second Top Unknown Match: Bird
I have a high match with bird. I don’t think I ever heard back from her. She is on my Hartley side. I go down the Shared Match Pro list and look for large matches:
Turns out that Bird is an Aunt or half sister to S.W. S.W. is my second cousin:
Ancestry thinks that S.W. is bird’s aunt or half sister. That means that we are related through my great Aunt Mary. Mary Alice (also known as Molly) had several children. So it may be possible to reason out a more exact relationship. However, I believe that bird must descend from Mary Alice aka Molly.
Upon further review of my tree, I see a person who would fit the remaining name of bird that I have blurred out. Here is my Hartley DNA/Genealogy Tree so far:
This is a big family, so this is the tip of the iceburg. My great Aunt Mary is in the second row about the middle. I am missing Mary Alice or Molly:
Here I have filled in Mary Alice and her children. Susan, Lady and Bird have all tested at AncestryDNA. So Bird was actually a niece to Susan and Lady and not a half sister. I may have been able to figure this out without the Pro Shared Matches, but the new utility got me to figure it out. Another mystery solved. So far, I am two for two.
Mystery Match #3: David
My match to David has some similarities to Bird:
I match David at 148 cM vs 150 for Bird. Here is a shared match between David and me:
I am the administrator for Joyce’s DNA, so that is convenient. A second shared match makes it even more clear:
Here I have separated out Jim and Joyce and added Jill and David to my Hartley DNA/Genealogy Tree. Again, I probably could have figured this out before, but I didn’t without the Pro Tools. The Pro Tools give a certainty to this line that I could have assumed before.
Mystery Match #4: Jessica
If I ever figured out how Jessica fits in, I didn’t make a note to that effect. Jessica shows up on my maternal side.
Jessica has a sister named Angela who matches me at a lower rate (64 cM). However, she has a private tree.
Summary and Conclusions
- I tried going down my list of matches as suggested by Jim Bartlett in his Blog
- I fairly easily identified my first 3 uncertain matches.
- I could not identify the fourth match. However, she likely descends from Nicholson and Lentz. I aslo could not trace her ancestry easily.
- This was a pretty fun excercise and I will likely continue in a subsequent Blog
Jessica’s Genealogy
I will have to make a tree for Jessica and see where that takes me. This is what she has:
Here is my tree so far:
So far, I’m in the US with this tree, so I’m tempted to accept all the green hints to see if any familiar names show up.
Still nothing rings a bell.
Here is the next level:
Still no luck. It seems like I should see a famililar name by now. I can tell by the shared matches that I am related to Jessica probably on the Lentz or Nicholson side or both.