My children’s maternal side is Polish, English, Irish, and French Canadian. I wrote a Blog on my children’s clusters in 2025, but only looked at their Morrow side.
The Genealogy
Here is my children’s maternal genealogy:
- Roughly 1/2 Polish – Jarek
- 1/4 French Canadian (Morrow and Tacy – though those surnames are anglicized)
- 1/8 Irish (Warren – previously thought to be Cavanaugh)
- 1/8 English – Gatley
The Clusters
Here are my daughter’s Standard Clusters:
I took a guess on the Maternal Grandmother part and was wrong. See how closely these two are related. These are both Polish Clusters. So perhaps Jarek and Wozniak. It appears that no maternal grandmother clusters are available at this level. Here is one person I recognize from the third cluster:
He is also from Jarek, but a generation back. Here are the ranges for the Standaard Clusters:
Here are Heather’s corrected standard clusters:
Let’s see if my son’s standard clusters are any different:
Here I have filtered for the maternal only clusters. It is basically the same as my daughter’s but my son has more of the recent matches and less of the older matches.
Warren Clusters
I worked on Morrow Clusters in my previous Blog, I’ll look at Warren Clusters now. Here are some of my son JJ’s ThruLines:
The closest match to JJ is a 4th cousin:
However, there is another 4th cousin on the Hazel Sullivan Line with a larger DNA match:
I’ll pick Robin as the focus person for JJ’s clusters. I’ll also add the other four in:
I will choose 20 – 100 cM for the match level:
After going through all that, I get only the people I put into the cluster. I assume that means that that is all there is. This is a case where clusters are not very helpful
Shared Matches
I pay $10 per month for these so let’s look at JJ and Robin’s Shared Matches:
Here are nine matches instead of 4, so this is clearly better than the Clusters.
I also have this Sullivan DNA tree:
It looks like I am missing Cedar. Also, my DNA tree does not match ThruLines. Robin should not be Autumn’s mother. This should be more accurate:
Shared Match Jacqueline
Ancestry has her has a grand niece or half niece to Robin. My guess is a grand niece as she shows her grandparents as still being alive in her tree.
Shared Match Michael
Michael shows his mother as a Sullivan:
Sullivan is a pretty common name, but I can add it to my tree as a floating tree and see if it matches up. Michael’s tree does not show his parents married, but I assume that they were. When I add them as married, I find an obituary for Dorothy:
Here is Linwood, New Jersey:
Dorothy’s sister was Elizabeth Fitzpatrick.
This must be the family in 1940:
Dorothy’s mother, Sarah was born in Massachusetts.
This Social Security record for Elizabeth is helpful:
Here is another Social Security record tying Sarah back to Lowell, MA:
James was listed as a musician when he married:
Charles Sullivan and Mary Smith marry in Lowelll in 1893. This brings me back to the tree that I have.
I need to merge this Charles Sullivan with the one in my floating tree:
Now I can add Michael to my children’s Warren DNA Tree:
I can see an error in my existing tree as Francis must have been born much later than 1835. That should be 1865. Civil War Time (or right after).
This shows that Michael and JJ are fourth cousins. Michael and Robin are third cousins. The DNA match between Michael and JJ and the fact that Michael’s mother was a Sulllivan gave me some certaintly that the trees would match up and they did.
The Warren DNA Tree is heavily weighted toward the Sullivan side:
It seems like there should be more DNA matches out there somewhere:
I have that Jeremiah Warren had 7 children, but the matches only show through two of the children: Bridget and John. Also, John Wareen had 5 children, but I have not seen matches between my children’s ancestor John Edward Warren Cavanaugh and any of the other 4 siblings. When I looked into the 4 siblings, it appeared that they all died single except for Thomas. However, Thomas married at age 17 and died less than a year later. That would explain a lack of DNA matching.
JJ and Tricia
JJ and Robin have a shared match named Tricia:
Above is Tricia’s paternal side tree. I could get Tricia into my tree by use of a floating tree, but I will try a lazier way. When I choose Mary Briere from Tricia’s tree and hit the Ancestry search button, I see this:
When I choose shared matches for Tricia and JJ and sort by closest matches to Tricia, I see that Eileen is a fairly close match to Tricia at 720 cM. Here is Eileen’s tree:
Eileen’s mother is Norma Golden, so my guess is that Norma is the sister of Francis Golden born 1930. Looks like I don’t have much information on Blanche Sullivan in my Ancestry Tree:
I can fix that quickly. Here is the marriage record:
The 1930 Census fills in some details for children:
With the 1940 Census for Lowell, we can add in Norma:
I’ll just add Tricia to my Warren DNA Tree:
Tricia is Eileen’s 1st cousin once removed and JJ’s 4th cousin once removed.
Heather’s Warren DNA
I can follow the same logic for Heather:
Heather has a closer match with Eileen. Clustering with Eileen only produced 4 matches. However, as before, shared matches with Eileen was much more helpful:
This is an interesting list. However, Dany shows as a possible Tessier connection:
I’ll ignore Dany and his small DNA match right now and look at Kevin who has a 21 cM DNA match with Heather:
The pateral side of Kevin’s tree goes back to George D Sullivan. It turns out that I have this George in my Ancestry Tree already:
Kevin’s father Jerrold should be in the 1950 Census:
He must be Jerry.
I already have Kevin on my Warren DNA Tree, so I don’t need to add him. However, his father is in my Tree now.
Heather’s next shared match is Julie. However, her ancestors appear to be from Canada. Heather’s next shared match Chantel has ancestry from Canada and England. JJ had fewer shared matches but fewer confusing ones also. Lexie also has Canadian ancestors. Lisa has a good tree, but again no Irish ancestry shown. Suzanne’s ancestors also have French sounding names. I assume that Eileen’s French Canadian heritage is somehow mixed in to her connection on the Warren side. Heather has some French Canadian ancestry and no apparent Irish ancestry. Michael also has French Canadian ancestry.
Summary and Conclusions
- I had thought that Clusters would be helpful in identifying Warren relative DNA matches. It turns out that my son’s Shared Matches were more helpful. I had also thought that my daughter’s Shared Matches to a Warren relative would be helpful. However, they resulted in a lot of French Canadian relatives for some reason.
- In any event, my Ancestry Tree on my children’s maternal side was improved and my Wareen DNA Tree was improved.
- I found out why there were no further matches on the John Warren/Bridget Welch Line. Apparently there were no further offspring other than from John Warren/Cavanaugh.
- Jeremiah Warren and Mary Kelly had other children. However, my Warren DNA Tree does not show matches with any of their offspring. Perhaps there were not many offspring or they didn’t have their DNA tested.