I’ll start by looking at my wife’s Aunt Lorraine’s Clusters. Lorraine’s mother was French Canadian:
Perhaps we will see some Lefevre, Methot, Pouliot and Fortin Clusters.
Here are Lorraine’s Clusters including paternal:
The connected clusters 1, 2, 3, 7, and 8 are maternal or French Canadian. Clusters 4, 5, and 6 are on the paternal or Irish side.
It took a while to go through Cluster 1:
I looked at all the common ancestor suggestions and assumed that they were right. Out of 28 matches there were 17 common ancestor suggestions. They all included Lefevre, so I assume that this is a Lefevre cluster.
Here is the overall picture:
Clusters were paternal, so I did not look at them. Lefevre or 1873 had two wives. My wife descends from the Pouliot wife and not the other, so the blank wife (CA2) indicates a half relationship.
The last Tremblay/Bouliet result does not go well with the Methot/Angesrs descendant match as Tremblay is in a different part of the tree:
What I see is that most of Lorraine’s Standard Clusters are on the Lefevre side. A few are on the Methot/Angers side. There are some on the Lefevre/Pouliot side, but those relations are too close to be helpful. This would be at the 1st cousin level. Usually, one looks for the 2nd cousin level or further out to track.
Pouliot Clusters
I can force Pouliot clusters by choosing a person of interest:
I’ll choose 2nd cousin Belharuk. I’ll choose a match level between 30 and 150 cM:
I don’t know why sometimes I get a large cluster to see and sometimes I do not. Here is the first match in the 10 match cluster:
Robin is on the Lefevre side, but her grandmother is a Pouliot. This is very confusing. Here is a situation where I can identify with the Ancestry computers as they are confused also. I better go to Fred’s tree. He is one of my wife’s relatives and I trust his tree:
Fred does not actually descend from Lefevre. That explains Lorraine’s clusters above. Many that are called Lefevre are actually Pouliot. Fred’s tree shows on his paternal side.:
Here is a Pouliot DNA tree I made a long while ago. I believe that it correctly shows the Pouliot relationships:
Here we see Belharuk, Robin, Fred, and Lorraine. Fred, Belharuk, and Lorraine are 2nd cousins to each other and not related on the Lefevre side. The confusing part is that Joseph Martin Lefevre also marries Mabel Ford:
And that is what causes a great deal of confusion.
I am not sure how to fix this at Ancestry.
Here is John in Cluster 1:
He is the third match down. According to Shared Matches at Ancestry, he is the son of Judy. Here is Judy’s tree on her maternal side:
Here, I have added Judy and John to my Pouliot DNA tree for the next time I get confused by what Ancestry is showing:
Back to Lorraine’s Standard Clusters
I just remembered that I can filter Lorraine’s standard clusters by her maternal side:
Cluster 3 is actually Pouliot:
This explains the mystery as to why Lorraine had so many Lefevre clusters. Not all the Lefevre clusters were really Lefevre clusters.
Summary and Conclusions
- I assumed that the Common Ancestors shown in the close relationships of the Standard Clusters were right, but many were not.
- I found this out when I went looking for Pouliot Clusters
- That means that I should not always accept the close common ancestor suggestions that Ancestry has.
- This Blog has me thinking about mapping my wife’s aunts’ French Canadian DNA using DNA Painter.