In my previous Blog, I looked at matches that my mother had with one of her third great-grandparents. By matches, I mean matches that are from siblings of the second great-grandparent in your line. Here is the example:
Here, John A Lentz is my mother’s third great-grandfather. She has 7 matches under Eliza Lentz and William Andrew Lentz.
I don’t count my mothers Jacob Lentz line. This is the type of ThruLine that I am not counting:
Above, there is no branching under Carl Lutke, so I am counting that as zero extra matches at the third great-grandparent level.
Counting My Mom’s ThruLine Matches to Third Great-Grandparents
I am a fan of Excel, so I will use that program. I’ll start simply:
Everyone should have 32 third great-grandparents. Or, 16 pairs of great-grandparents. Technically a match may descend from one and not the other. Here is my list of third great-grandparents from my mother’s ThruLines
Here I have my mother’s paternal side with a full 16 third great-grandparents. For some reason there are only 12 third great-grandparents on my mother’s maternal side. My guess for a reason: because my mother’s paternal side was from a German Colony in Latvia, there was more intermarriage and therefor more DNA matches.
The yellow surnames are the ones I am not sure of and added in for this excercise. Next, I will go through the 28 3rd GGPs.
Interestingly, the Lentz line which I thought was poorly documented by DNA has the largest number of matches at 7.
Here are the totals and averages:
If I took out the zeroes, the averages would be higher. Also as these numbers are in effect doubled due to pairs of 3rd GGPs, the totals could be shown as half as much.
My Own ThruLines Numbers
Here I’ll want to compare to siblings, so I’ll sue a slightly different format:
This will also be a generation more recent, so there could be more ThruLine matches potentially. This time, I am up to 30 3rd GGPs:
I am missing one pair of ancestors. I wonder which one. The problem is that I don’t know the parents for my 2nd great-grandmother Jane Spratt.
Here I found some surprising results:
I only had Thrulines matches (the way I defined them) in 11 of the 30 3rd GGP Lines. My mother had matches in 20 of her Lines. I’m not sure of the reason why. When I adjusted to the Non-Zero Averages, the numbers were similar to my mother’s:
Comparing Siblings
I’ll start with Heidi, who is listed first at Ancestry:
Our numbers were very similar.
Statistics for My Brother Jon
Jon gets honorable mention in the Bradford/Hathaway Line. This is an important line as it leads back to Governor Bradford of the Mayflower. I have a note that Wilkinson was omitted under Robert Hartley. That is because Robert Hartley died, Mary Pilling remarried a Wilkinson. So this match should not be under Robert Hartley.
My Sister Lori’s ThruLines
I have four siblings who have tested at Ancestry. I also have my father’s cousin who I had tested at Ancestry and another of my father’s cousins. It would be interesting to look at their Hartley side ThruLines.
Lori excelled at Baker and Faunce with the largest number of extra lines from the 3rd great-grandparents.
My Last Sibling at Ancestry: Sharon
This shows that on average there is about one match per ThruLine. However, there are matches in only about one in three ThruLines, because of the ThruLines where there were matches there was an average of about three matches. That is still pretty good for the 4th cousin or further matches where it is not likeily to get a DNA match.
My Father’s Cousins’ Hartley ThruLines at the 3rd GGP Level
I’ll start with Joyce:
Joyce had a lot of Snell matches. She also had those important Pilgrim Bradford matches. Of of 16 Hartley side ThruLines, Joyce had 6 with multiple line matches.
Here is Maury:
Unfortunatley, Maury’s tree has the wrong parents for Harvey Bradford. There were two Harvey Bradfords and the tree has the wrong one. This is understandable as the documents are confusing. I had to check land deeds to sort out the family. Here is the correct ThruLines:
It is interesting that Joyce’s ThruLines go back to a man who was born in 1755.
Summary and Conclusions
- The exercise gave me an idea of the areas where there are matches from descendants of 3rd GGPs in my family
- Some ThruLines were not accurate or misleading, but on the most part they appeared to be accurate
- Most Lines had no extra matches. Some Lines with extra matches were highlighted.