Category: DNA General

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Connecting Eva to the Rathfelder Tree

I had wrtten a Blog about Eva in 2020, but had trouble connecting her to my Rathfelder Tree despite a good DNA connection. Now I see the connection.

Here are the DNA matches that Eva has with my mother:

The Rathfelder Genealogy

Here is what Eva has for her tree:

I am interested in the Rathfelder side. Through recent research, I have found “Henrihs Ratfelders”. I found him as Johann Heinrich Rathfelder. This is the same name as my great-grandfather. In fact Eva’s grandfather was probably named for my great-grandfather.

While searching for my great-grandfather, I found this record:

This is a family church record from St. Paul’s in Riga showing Eva’s Johann Heinrich born in Linden (the church for Hirschenhof) on 8 October 1887. I don’t know who the Marie and Heinrich are at the bottom of the page. I wonder if they are my great-grandparents. At any rate there is also a Nicolai in this family who was probably named for my great Uncle Nicolai born in 1874:

Adding Eva to My DNA/Genealogy Tree

This is the DNA matching Rathfelder Tree I have so far:

Here I have added in Eva:

Eva is a 2nd cousin once removed to my mother Gladys. Our common ancestors were Johann Rathfelder born in 1819 and Rosine Schwechheimer.

“Painting” Eva

I use DNAPainter to show DNA matches. Here is what I have so far for my mother:

My mom is 35% painted over all (or 35% filled in) and 40% painted on the paternal side. It turns out that I had already added Eva on my mom’s chart:

It looks like I had guessed at a more distant Rathfelder ancestor. Now that I know better, I can correct that.

Summary and Conclusions

  • I am glad to see now how Eva fits in to the Rathfelder tree
  • Her family and my family were apparently close. Her grandfather appears to be named after my great-grandfather and at least one of her great uncles was named after my great uncle.

 

 

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Browsing Latvian Church Records for Ancestors

For a while, Raduraksti was updating its website, and I was not finding the Church records I used to see for my ancestors in Hirschenhof, Latvia. My ancestors attended the Linden Church in the area:

These appear to be the records:

There should be earlier records. Perhaps they will become available later.

Liepkalnes, Not Linden

I see now that I should have been lookiing at Liepkalnes, not Linden:

That would explain why I was having so much trouble finding people.

Here are some of my ancestors who lived in Latvia:

I see that some death dates are missing. It would be nice to fill some in if I could find them. However, that seems difficult. Perhaps filling in marriages would be easier.

Jacobine Lutke

I see that I don’t have a marriage for my second great-grandmother Jacobine Lutke:

Ancestry has this hint:

Here is the record on the page:

I would say that this looks right. Of course, this is just the summary of the marriage record and not the marriage record itself. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find this record on the Raduraksti website.

Johann Georg Rathfelder Born 1778

I am missing Johann Georg’s marriage record also:

This is a tricky person to research because my memory tells me I had that Johann Georg had another brother by the same name – improbably as it seems:

The other confusing part is that the second Johann Goerg was supposed to have been born 14 years afther the first one. Aslo the Johannes who was supposed the be the son of the first Johann Georg was born in 1819 which would make him of an age that he could have been the son of the second Johann Georg! I would like to find the birth for Johann, but it appears that the records only go back as far as 1824 currently.

Browsing Ancestry Records

I found this interesting record at Ancestry:

I don’t recall seeing this before. This appears to be a personal register for the Rathfelder Family for Saint Paul’s Evangelical Lutheran Church in Riga.

From what I can tell, this is a record for the brother of my great-grandfather Heinrich Rathfelder. I have this brother as Georg Gustav Rathfelder:

The above record can at least fill in some family history. I don’t know if the +1918 attached to Heinrich was to mean his death or just his leaving. It appears that Johann Heinrich was named after my great-grandfather. I couldn’t make out the second name for Jakob. There appears to be much other interesting information on the page, but I don’t know what it all means.

A Record for My Great-Grandfather Johann Heinrich Rathfelder

This appears to be a baptismal record:

Sponsors appear to be Gerhard Schwechheimer and a Rathfelder. I see that I can also add this wedding record to my Ancestry file:

I’m having such fun with these records, I’lll look more into Alexander’s siblings.

Johann Phillip Nicolai Rathfelder

This appears to be Nicolai’s Baptismal record:

Again, I take the additional names to be sponsors. However, there appear to be more names than usual. I found this record listed under Marriage Banns:

I think that this is telling me that Philippe Nicolai’s mother-in-law was Wilhemene Rathfelder.

This is my great-aunt Maria Caroline Rathfelder’s baptismal record:

I recognize the last name as Pfief or similar spelling.

Harry Eduard Rathfelder

Here I think I have a mistake and I think I know how it could have happened. Harry is the son of Phillipe Nicolai:

Harry’s Personal Register is interesting:

I don’t understand all the notations. It appears that although he was born in Riga, he was confirmed in Linden. Looks like he married in 1932 and has a swastika near his name. The above record is from the Jesus Church – I assume in Riga.

Erna Auguste’s Baptismal Record

Erna’s great-grandmother was a Fuhrmann. I believe that Ern died young:

I am glad for transcriptions as I would have had trouble finding this record:

Caroline Antonie

It looks like I missed one of her names. Ancestry had her birth year as 1877, but that bumps into Erna’s birth, so I will keep the 1878 that I had. Caroline’s Confirmation Record shows her born in 1878 also:

Johann Jacob Reinhold Rathfelder

I may have too many names here:

I dropped the Reinhold in my family tree.

Robert Ernst

It appears that Robert also died young:

Marie Otilie Hilda

Otilie must have been for her godmother. Marie also died young at 2 month:

Ludwig Artur Wilmar

If I have him right, he would have been my grandfather’s next oldest sibling. I am having trouble finding this person in the Latvian records that Ancestry has. I also cannot remember where I got the original information. I may have to re-evaluate Ludwig. While searching for Johann Heinrich Rathfelder, I finally found him:

The Ludwig name was probably for his sponsor Ludwig Metz.

Leonhard Florentin

Leo was apparently the baby of the family:

He got his name from Leonhard Goldigowsky(?).

My Grandfather, Alexander Siegfried Oscar

For some reason, Alexander’s baptism was at St Paul’s rather than St Peter’s Church in Riga. It looks like Alexander didn’t pick up a name from his sponsor. I see that Alexander’s godmother was Ottilie who was a sponsor for Alexander’s older sister Marie Ottilie HIlda who died young. It also appears that Alexander was born in July not June as I had it previously. Of course, all other records appear to show that Alexander was born in June. I guess I’ll go back to June.

Summary and Conclusions

  • I started out trying to use the Raduraksti website to find the records of my Rathfelder ancestors, but found the Ancestry records much easier to use
  • The death records were especially easy to use as they are difficult to read and go through without being able to search for records.
  • I found that searching in different ways helped. For example, I could only find one of the sons of Johann Heinrich Rathfelder by seaerching for the father
  • I found that one of the sons I had for Johann Heinrich Rathfelder was actually the son of his oldest son Nicolai. Nicolai’s son Harry appeared to have a swastika by his name which I am sure would have been common for Germans in the 1930’s.
  • Finally, I found out that I was looking at the wrong records at the Radurakski website.
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A New Ellis Match for My Wife’s Aunt Elaine

I was notified by Ancestry recently that my wife’s Aunt Elaine had a new DNA match named Jolene.

Ancestry thinks that these two could be in the 2nd to third cousin range.

Here is Jolene’s tree:

As Jolene and Elaine have shared DNA matches on the Ellis side, it would seem like the connection should be on Jolene’s Ellis side. I can try to build out this tree:

I see that Arthur’s father was antoher Arthur. Arthur’s marriage record gives his parents:

They were on the next page:

That gets Jolene’s tree this far:

Now George is starting to match my Ancestry Tree for my wife’s family:

However, I had that George’s wife was Marion MacArthur. I think that Matthews is more correct at this time. So, I have corrected my tree, but not added the families down.

An Ellis DNA/Genealogy Tree

This is the tree that I have so far:

George was probably the younger brother of James Henry Ellis:

When I add in Jolene, I see that she is a third cousin to Elaine:

It could be that the Georges on my wife’s line could have been named for this George Ellis. George’s Death Certificate listed him as a bridge builder:

 

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Another Nicholson/Dockrill DNA Match

I wrote about another Nicholson/Dockrill descendant named Jessica here. That match opened up some new information on the Nicholson family history. I hadn’t known that the family lived in Liverpool for a while:

This Maria Baxter Nicholson married a Dockrill. Maria was born in Sheffield in 1858 and later baptized in Liver pool in 1860. The Nicholson family moves to Philadelphia around 1870 when Maria is 12, so it is unclear why Maria does not join the family to Philadelphia.

In 1879, the Philadelphia Nicholsons have a son named George Dockrill Nicholson. This birth recognizes the fact that Maria Baxter Nicholson married a Dockrill probably when she was about 20 years old.

The New AncestryDNA Match: DPD

The new match shows that Maria married:

In 1861, Maria Baxter Nicholson is living with her grandmother and Aunt in Liverpool:

Maria’s Aunt Ann was born in 1822, so was about 13 years older than Maria’s mother Martha.

This appears to be Maria in 1881:

She is living on Sharp St. in Liverpool and is the wife of a ship steward. The record is a bit confusing as it names Jane as her mother and Flora and Rosine as sisters. I assume that these two are in-laws. My Aunt once told me she had a ship captain ancestor from Liverpool. Perhaps this ship steward was the one – though not really an ancestor.

The 1901 Census fills out more information about the family:

DPD is My Third Cousin

DPD adds another line to the English Branch of Nicholsons:

Maria’s Burial

Maria was buried in Anfield Cemetery in Liverpool:

Summary and Conclusions

  • Based on my new third cousin Nicholson match, I looked up more information on the Maria Baxter Nicholson Dockrill Line
  • It is unclear why Maria stayed in England when the rest of the family left
  • It is also unclear why Maria was living with the Baxter family in 1861. Was it a temporary stay or long-term?
  • I have not found a marriage for Maria and George Dockrill – however they were clearly married
  • I found some more interestign details about the occupation of George Dockrill and the final resting place of Maria.

 

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Visual Phasing My Two Children with the Fox Spreadsheet: Part 4

This should be the final Blog for the visual phasing of my childrens’ autosomal DNA. I will be looking at Chromosomes 19-22 and the X Chromosome sometimes called Chromosome 23.

Chromosome 19

There appears to be a discrepancy at position 46 between the crossover line and where my mother matches JJ. However, as these are smaller chromosomes, any difference will be exagerrated in the view.

I’m not seeing any easy cousin matches on the maternal side.

I had said that the the shorter chromosomes can be easier to solve. There is the other problem that they are so short, that there may not be any identifiable matches on them. I can put in a G3 and G4 on the right hand side of the Chromosome:

I checked Heather at MyHeritage and she has a match with Richard who has all Polish ancestors:

Now that I have this, the G3 and G4’s are not useful:

Heather and Richard have a shared match with Krystyna:

I am showing some progress:

JJ and Richard have a shared match at MyHeritage with Patricia here:

That leaves a small area to fill in on the left side of Chromosome 19:

From a comparison between JJ and Heather, it appears that the first crossover should be at about 5.2M. I’m having trouble figuring out the left hand side of Chromosome 19, so I will leave it as is for now.

Downloading Heather and JJ’s MyHeritage Segment Data

While working on Chromosome 19, I downloaded Heather and JJ’s segment data from MyHeritage. I waited a little while and got an email with the information I was looking for. Heather did have these matches at MyHeritage which appear to go through position 5.2:

However, it is difficult to tell for sure if these are real matches, maternal, paternal or if they in fact clearly straddly position 5.2M.

Chromosome 20

On the paternal side, all but one segment is Rathfelder DNA:

I am having trouble finding DNA matches on Heather and JJ’s maternal side on this Chromosome also.

Now it’s time to get creative. I put a Poland filter on Heather’s matches at MyHeritage. I see a match there with Grzegorz:

Unfortunately, it is rather a small match. Heather and JJ have several small matches in this area. I’ll take a chance and give that segment to Jarek:

JJ clearly has matches that go through position 18:

That is about as far as I can get. However, that is built upon small matches on the left side of Chromosome 20.

Chromosome 21

Here, Heather and JJ have all Rathfelder and no Hartley on their paternal side.

Heather and Jarek-side Richard have this match:

I’ll say that Heather’s match goes through position 41.2.

Heather has a match on the Cavanaugh side with Martha:

That should finish Chromosome 21:

JJ’s match with Martha further confirms the visual phasing:

This Chromosome is further shortened by some unusable area at the beginning of the Chromosome.

 

Chromosome 22

There are no obvious matches on the maternal side yet:

JJ and Nicholas match:

He is probably on the Jarek side, but I can’t be certain.

Heather’s match with David:

I didn’t see any Polish ancestors on David’s tree. Also, this is a paternal match as my siblings show up as common matches with Heather and David.

I’ll leave Chromosome 22 like this and hope that I get more or find more matches:

I did find this match at MyHeritage between Heather and Krzysztof after filtering for matches from Poland:

Here is another match that Heather has at MyHeritage with Rafal from Poland:

I see now that I should have extended the segments to here anyway:

Now, I’m doing better than I thought I could. I see that MyHeritage shows that JJ matches Rafal, but not on Chromosome 22:

This suggests to me that JJ should have the crossover at 43.9 M:

Heather and JJ’s X Chromosome

Here we have a different situation. JJ has no paternal side to his X Chromosome as these are not passed down from father to son. Heather’s paternal side of her X Chromosome is just from my mom, so her paternal grandmother. That leaves Heather and JJ’s maternal side DNA to fill in: Jarek and Cavanaugh.

Another complication is that MyHeritage does not report the X Chromosome and Heather and JJ did not test at 23andMe. That means any matches will have to be from Gedmatch or FTDNA.

This is what I have for Heather at DNAPainter:

I am not sure why there is a gap in the paternal side as Heather should match her grandmother the whole way.

Here is Heather’s match with Martha on the Cavanaugh side:

The blue portion in the comparison betweeen Heather and JJ on the top row indicates that JJ should match the same on his maternal side. JJ also has a small match with Peter on the Jarek side here:

JJ’s match list shows that he has no X Match with Peter:

So perhaps 6.4cM is below FTDNA’s X Chromosome match threshold. Heather, on the other hand shows no X match with Peter on the FTDNA Chromosome Browser.

Assuming that is a valid match, I get this:

JJ’s Interesting X Match with Ellen at Gedmatch

If this match is correct, then it suggests that my mapping above in incorrect. I would assume that JJ’s match is with either on the Jarek or Cavanaugh side, but not both. Here is JJ’s ancestry where the match can be:

From the right-hand column, there are two Polish lines, two English lines and three French Canadian lines. I have sent an email to Ellen to see if she has family history information.

So how do I interpret the new information? I need to disregard the small DNA match with Peter for now. One interesting thing is that JJ matches Martha on the Cavanaugh side where he doesn’t match Ellen:

JJ’s match with Martha is from about position 9-33 where I have the red arrow pointing to the black region. I take it to mean that both Martha and Ellen match JJ on his Cavanaugh side, but down different branches of the Cavanaugh line. For example, JJ’s match with Martha may be on the Morrow side and JJ’s match with Ellen may be on the Cavanaugh/Warren side.

Here is my guess on how the the X Chromosome should look:

I now have JJ as mostly Cavanaugh due to the match with Ellen.

Heather and Ellen

Here is how Heather matches Ellen at Gedmatch:

Heather has a smaller match with Ellen, but it is still significant. In the area I have mapped as Jarek for Heather, she does not match Ellen, so that is consistant with the visual phasing that I have done above. That means that Ellen should match JJ and Heather on the Cavanaugh line. That would likely mean a French Canadian or English connection.

One Last Step: Heather and JJ’s X Chromosome Segments

I already downloaded Heather and JJ’s autosomal segments at Gedmatch. However, this did not include their X Chromosome segments. I picked the Segement Option at Tier 1 for Heather. The minimum I could pick was 1,000 matches so I picked that. I don’t need a lot for the X Chromosome. I picked the csv download option and then saved the file as an Excel file. I formatted the positions with commas:

Next, I would like to see if Heather has matches that go through the next crossover on the X Chromosome which is at 143.7. However, my download was for all of Heather’s X Chromosome matches: paternal and maternal. I really want the maternal side. For that I have to choose Heather’s phased maternal kit to get the segments. When I try to do this, I get no segments. I assume that when Heather’s phased maternal kit was created, it didn’t include the X Chromosme.

JJ’s matches will already be phased, so I will try him next. JJ has one match that goes through 143.7, but I am not convinced that this match will help me:

One problem is that the SNP count is quite low.

Heather has matches that go through 143.7, but they are mostly on the paternal side:

TX is a match where I can’t tell if it is paternal or maternal. All the other matches are close paternal matches. That means that I will leave the X Chromosome visually phased as is for now:

Summary and Conclusions

  • I was able to visually phase my two childrens’ 23 chromosomes.
  • Some were fully phased and some were partially phased
  • Because I had tested my mother, Heather and JJ were already phased on the paternal side
  • There are more DNA cousin matches on the maternal Jarek side than the maternal Cavanaugh side. This is offset by Martha who is a fairly close Cavanaugh relative to my two children
  • I am interested in DNA matches on the Cavanaugh side due to some confusion in the genealogy. For example, Cavanaugh going back should actually be Warren the way I understand it
  • Visually phasing the X Chromosome is a little different than the others. I found a large Cavanaugh side X Chromosome match to Heather and JJ and wrote to the match. I hope that she writes back so we can find the connection.
  • Some chromosomes may need updating and filling in as new maternal matches are identified
  • Using the Fox Spreadsheet is a handy way to do visual phasing and keeps all the information in one need spreadsheet

 

 

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Visual Phasing My Two Children with the Fox Spreadsheet: Part 3

In Part Three of this series, I will be looking at Chromosomes 13-18 for my children and visually phasing them to the extent that I can.

Chromosome 13

Here, Heather gets a full dose of her Rathfelder Grandmother’s DNA:

I didn’t see any of the Jarek-matching DNA on the Fox Spreadsheet. I don’t have to open JJ’s FTDNA account each time for his Cavanaugh side match Martha as I aready downloaded JJ’s segments:

Here is where Heather matches Martha:

That takes care of the right half of Chromosome 13:

Heather has this maternal match with Pavel that JJ does not:

It is small, but likely to be real as it is a phased match. This appears to be the correct solution for Heather and JJ’s Chromosome 13:

Chromosome 14

Here is what Heather and JJ’s paternal side looks like:

Heather has a small DNA match with Robert that JJ doesn’t have on the Jarek side:

That is enough to map the left side of Chromosome 14:

The maternal side DNA can move over two lines as those are taken up by paternal crossovers.

Heather matches Peter, a Jarek-side matche, here:

Here is JJ’s match with Peter at FTDNA:

This indicates to me that JJ has a crossover to Jarek at about position 70:

Next, I need to get the position number for the right side of the green FIR.

This is at about 96.6.

JJ has a maternal match with Ashley that goes to about 98:

Heather’s matches do not go that far, so I would give the crossover to Heather:

Other than to JJ, Heather’s furthest out math is at 91.

Chromosome 15

Let’s see how Chromosome 15 shakes out for Heather and JJ:

This shows that Chromosome 15 only has two crossovers and one of those is on the paternal side. It also shows that JJ got a full dose of Rathfelder DNA on his paternal side. Heather and JJ’s match with Jarek-side match Robert shows where the other crossover is:

Here is the finished, simple Chromosome 15:

This tells me that if I was looking for Cavanaugh matches on this Chromosome, I should look at Heather’s match list and not JJ’s.

A Further Check on Chromosome 15

I show that Heather has a match with Jarek-side LeeAnne here:

I had assumed that LeeAnne was on the Jarek side, so something seems wrong. Perhaps LeeAnne is on the Cavanaugh side. When I check on LeeAnne’s tree at Ancestry, I assumed that the Dziura in her family was the Dziuria in my children’s family:

That could mean that LeeAnne could match on the Cavanaugh side? Very confusing. However, LeeAnne’s shared matches at AncestryDNA are clearly on the Jarek side. The only explanation that I can think of is that Heather and JJ have a crossover at nearly the same poine where (going from right to left) JJ goes from Jarek to Cavanaugh and Heather goes from Cavanaugh to Jarek.

Checking Martha on the Cavanaugh Side

I see that JJ matches Martha here:

This confirms that at some point on the left side of Chromosome 15, JJ needs to have Cavanaugh DNA and Heather has to have Jarek DNA, but I can’t figure out where that is.

One More Check

When I check on Heather compared to JJ at Gedmatch with a lower match limit of 3 cM, I get this:

These are just two small matches at the beginning of the Chromosome. These two small matches may or may not be important. I’m tempted to think that Heather and JJ had maternal crossovers at about the same point:

I don’t know where that point was, but it must have been after position 54.3. Here are Heather’s maternal matches:

The crossover is likely between 55 and 60.8. based on Heather’s maternal matches.

Chromosome 16

I hope that this Chromosome goes more smoothly than the last one:

I don’t see any uploaded Jarek matches on the spreadsheet. I have used Peter before as a Jarek side match:

That gets things started on the maternal side:

The 55 above is closer to 54.8. That is cutting it close, but JJ has this maternal match:

Heather’s match with KP ends slightly sooner:

So I will give Heather the crossover at 54.8:

JJ has many matches going through 82, so I will give the crossover to Heather again:

I couldn’t find a clear answer to the two segments on the left of Chromosome 16:

Chromosome 17

Here Heather gets a full dose of Hartley DNA from my father:

 

A match with Robert on the Jarek side shows that Heather has the first maternal crossover from Jarek to Cavanaugh:

 

JJ matches Cavanaugh side Martha here:

That means that Heather must match on the Jarek side in that area:

A Little Detective Work to Fill in the Last Part of Chromosome 17

I noticed that on Heather’s list of matches from FTDNA, she has one with a Polish sounding last name:

The match goes through positiion 72.7. I need to know if this is a paternal or maternal match for Heather. I checked Heather’s in common matches at FTDNA and did not see any paternal matches. That tells me that this match is likely on Heather’s maternal side. From what I can tell, this is the right answer for Heather and JJ’s Chromosome 17:

Chromosome 18

I’lll conclude this Blog with Chromosome 18:

This project would have been much more difficult without my mother’s Rathfelder DNA.

Jarek Cousin Robert has a match that goes to position 53:

The match looks like it goes over the crossover line, but I don’t trust the accuracy of it.

Cavanaugh Cousin Martha matches Heather here:

There were no obvious snags in Chromosome 18:

This would be a good Chromosome to look for Cavanaugh side matches – especially on Heather’s side.

Summary and Conclusions

  • It looks like I was able to finish the visual phasing for each of Chromosomes 13-18
  • The smaller higher number chromosomes are generally considered easier to visually phase compared to the longer chromosomes
  • I find it interesting that when I passed my DNA on to my children, I was really passing down my parents DNA to them and combined my children recieved the DNA from their four grandparents.
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Visual Phasing My Two Children with the Fox Spreadsheet: Part 2

In my previous Blog, I started working on visually phasing the first 6 chromosomes of my two children. Normally, visual phasing is done with three or more siblings. However, it should not be too difficult to visually phase Heather and JJ’s chromosomes. I have tested their paternal grandmother. Because of that, their paternal side is basically phased.

Chromosome 1

Here is how far I got previously:

It would be helpful to put a few position numbers in at the end of the Chromosome. Specifically, the beginning and the end of the last green HIR would be helpful. The end should be around 216.6M where the last black non-matching area starts:

I’ll call that 215.5. Here is the beginnning of the FIR:

I’ll call that 203.6M.

Segment Search for Maternally Phased Kits of Heather and JJ

Here are some of the results for segment details for the maternal part of JJ’s DNA:

Near the bottom, JJ matches Heather from 237.5M. However, his match with *sly goes past that match to 238.9M. This is a likely indication that Heather has a crossover at 237.5M. Unfortunately, we first need to find out who has the crossover at 203.6.

Heather has this match which I don’t see on JJ’s match list:

Betty likely matches Heather on the Cavanaugh side. Gedmatch indicates that Betty tested at Ancestry, but I am having trouble identifying her test. So it looks like I am stuck, unless I download more match information from FTDNA and MyHeritage for Heather and JJ.

Chromosome 2

Here, I’ve added a few position numbers:

Let’s see what Heather and JJ show around positions 115 and 231M. I couldn’t find anything obvious, so I need to find the end of the first green FIR:

I’ll call that 20.7M. Heather has many maternal matches that pass through 20.7M:

So, I’ll give the crossover to JJ:

Next, I’ll add two more positions:

 

However, when I do that, I notice a problem with the segment map. I see that this is the result of a missplaced paternal crossover:

It’s a good thing I am checking this. The crossover from Rathfelder to Hartley should be at 83:

JJ shows a match going through 47.7 which is the beginning of the second green HIR:

That means that Heather gets the crossover there:

This is an improvement over what I had. In this case, it helped to check.

Chromosome 3 Check

Here I added some easy position numbers:

I’ll look at Heather and JJ’s maternal matches around position 2 and 168.3M. Heather’s first match goes beyond 3M:

The first position above should have been a 3:

So I am giving the crossover to JJ.

JJ has many matches that go through 168.3:

So I give this crossover to Heather:

Heather and JJ do not have many maternal matches around 183.1, so I will leave this Chromosome as is.

Chromosome 7

Chromosomes 4-6 are in good shape, so let’s check on Heather and JJ’s Chromosome 7:

Here, JJ’s match with his paternal grandmother didn’t quite match up with his crossover point, so I put his grandmother’s match at the closest crossover.

Here, I’ll add Leeanne’s match on the left side of Chromosome 7:

Here is Heather’s match with Cavanaugh side Martha:

This match fills in 2 Cavanaugh segments for Heather:

Due to the HIR and FIR, JJ is Jarek and Cavanaugh below Heather. JJ’s match with Martha brings his Cavanaugh DNA to the end of his Chromosome 7:

Next, it would be nice if JJ or Heather had some maternal matches going through position 80. Heather’s maternal match Charles meets that requirement:

Next, I am focusing in on 56.1:

JJ’s match with the same Charles appears to go through 56.1:

That leaves the very left of Heather and JJ’s maternal side. The next position I am interested in is at 5.7:

JJ has two matches going through that position. That should finish Chromosome 7:

However, it doesn’t. Two segments after the red one above should be red and not green. If there is no match there, then the two Hartley segments cannot be right there. Remember when I guessed on JJ and Heather’s grandmother’s ambiguous match position? I guessed wrong.

Here is the easiest, though perhaps non-scientific way to fix the problem:

I moved JJ’s Rathfelder segment right to 80. I then moved JJ’s Jarek segment left from 80 to 76.3. This is the intuitive, logical solution. By non-scientific, I mean that I didn’t look at all of Heather’s and JJ’s matches in that region to double check the crossovers. The yellow/green/red segment map checks out.

Chromosome 8

Things have been going fairly smoothly so far. Let’s hope they continue that way.

Here are two complications. The first situation has a FIR going into a region with no matches. In order for that to happen there has to be two crossovers. The second arrow points to a region where there appear to be two crossovers fairly close to each other, but the match to Heather and JJ’s paternal grandmother shows as being between the two crossovers.

The start of the FIR is at 101.6:

Using the closest rule, I’ll go with the 99.2 crossover.

I left the little paternal segment blank on JJ’s side as there are two very close changes there. The segment is so small, it doesn’t matter. I will just need to have a HIR there when I am done.

Mat1’s matches give some Jarek segments to Heather and JJ:

This seems to be what the match with Jarek relative Mat1 is telling me:

The next step is to find some more crossover locations for this Chromosome.

Next, I’ll check Heather and JJ to see what their matches look like in the vivinity of 12.9, 72.1, 106 and 137.5.

Downloading Heather and JJ’s Segments

However, instead of looking at each chromosome, I will download Heather and JJ’s segment information for their top 1,000 maternal matches at Gedmatch. I did this, but could not find any easy clues as to their crossovers on this chromosome.

Chromosome 9

Chromosome 9 looks interesting:

For one thing, the Heather and JJ’s matches with their grandmother do not line up with the first crossover I have. I went back and compared Heather with JJ at a resolution of 3 cM:

3 cM is the smallest increment allowed. It is good that the smallest is not 4 as I would have missed two crossovers at 10.2 and 13M. Now this makes more sense:

Matches with Robert point out two maternal crossovers:

It seems like JJ should have a crossover to Jarek at 98.1.  When I lower the threshold for JJ’s match with Robert, I get this:

This is what I expected, so JJ does have a crossover at 98:

That leaves only 4 maternal segments. Here is a match that Heather has with Martha on the Cavanaugh side:

Next, I’ll look at Heather and JJ’s maternal match list at around 133.6M. Heather has a lot of maternal matches that go through that crossover. That means that the crossover must belong to JJ:

Here is what I end up with:

Chromosome 10

Here is my initial interpretation:

Chromosome 9 had to HIRs. Chromosome 10 has a small one shown in green above.

Robert has a small match with JJ:

Robert is on the Jarek side, so Heather must have Cavanaugh DNA in her corresponding maternal segment. Heather’s match with Martha on the Cavanaugh confirms that:

 

Heather also matches Martha at the right hand side of Chromosome 10.

Next, I am looking for the position number for the beginning of the HIR:

I’ll call that 114.6.

Heather and JJ’s maternal matches at Gedmatch are primarily between 13.8 and 79.2 for Chromosome 10, so I am stuck for now:

Chromosome 11

Here is my start:

JJ’s matches don’t align perfectly with his paternal grandmother. Robert matches Heather and JJ on the Jarek side:

When I put this in, I notice that there is a Fully Identical Region (FIR) going to a non-match. That means that there needs to be an extra crossover there.

Leanne matches JJ and not Heather on the right hand side:

Here is the beginning of the first FIR in green:

I’ll ignore the three yellow lines and call the start of the FIR 57.4M.

Heather has maternal matches that go through 123.6:

 

Because there is already a paternal crossover at 115.8, I can also move the two Cavanaugh segments to the left.

JJ has two matches that go through 102.5:

Heather would not have a super small Cavanaugh segment at 95.8:

Checking around FTDNA, I see that JJ has a match with Peter, who is in common with Robert and Leeanne from the Jarek side on my spreadsheet:

Thanks to Peter, I can finish Chromosome 11:

Other matches at FTDNA and MyHeritage would also help in completing chromosomes.

Chromosome 12

Here is my starting point with my children’s Rathfelder grandmother added:

I was suspicious of the segment at the right hand side, so I looked at the match between Heather and Gladys at a lower resolution:

Here we see Heather has a small amount of Rathfelder at the end of her paternal side. I don’t see any standard Jarek matches, so I’ll check on Martha on the Cavanaugh side:

JJ has two good matches with Martha:JJ

JJ’s other match with Martha appears to extend to the left of 96.1, but I’m not sure:

Heather’s maternal match with Bryan at Gedmatch clarifies this:

JJ also has matches that go through position 15.3:

In order to get more match information, I will download Heather and JJ’s segment data from FTDNA. The problem with this is that it takes a little work to figure out whether the matches are paternal or maternal.

Summary and Conclusions

  • I have now looked at about half of my childrens’ chromosomes and have done an initial mapping out of their segments, sorting them out to where they got their DNA from their four grandparents where I could figure that out.
  • I found an additional Jarek side match named Peter at FTDNA which helped out on one chromosome
  • I downloaded additional segment information from Gedmatch and FTDNA. The Gedmatch segments are more helpful as I can download just the maternal side segment imformation
  • So far, the detailed segment information from FTDNA has not been helpful as many matches are on the paternal side or small and I can’t be sure on which side they are (or perhaps they could be false matches).

 

 

 

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Visual Phasing My Two Children with the Fox Spreadsheet: Part 1

I have made a few isolated attempts at Visual Phasing for my two children. However, I have not used the Fox Spreadsheet up to this point. This spreadsheet is not supposed to work well with the online version of Excel, but I am trying it nonetheless.

Getting Started

I downloaded my two children’s information from Gedmatch in addition to three “cousins” matches. One cousin is my mother. She is the secret weapon as her matches should automatically phase my children’s patermal side. The other two matches were two second cousins once removed. One was on the Hartley side and one was on their Jarek side. I don’t think that I have cousin matches on the Cavanaugh side. If I do, I don’t think that there is a good match at Gedmatch.

I looked at Steven Fox’s intstructions. In order to get a download from Gedmatch, it required my pushing a ‘compare’ button from time to time to get around the Captcha feature at Gedmatch.

Chromosome 1

Here is my start at Chromosome 1:

I’m sure that there could be more hidden crossovers, but I started with what seemed to make sense. I already know that G2 is Rathfelder for my mom, Gladys. Where my children do not match my mom, I assume that they match my dad who I have as G1. There may be a way to go directly to a known grandparent, but I couldn’t figure that out. [I figured it out later by typing the surname into the cell.]

Robert on the Jarek Side

Robert matches JJ here:

As the match appears to go beyond the two crossovers, I will assume that three areas on JJ’s side are Jarek and the same three areas are Cavanaugh for Heather as she does not match Robert there. I’ll use G3 as Jarek and G4 as Cavanaugh. Unfortunately, that has caused a problem:

This mapping created a red region that has gone too far to the left. That means that either:

  1. The crossover should be further to the right, or
  2. Heather may have a small match with Robert in that large red section

If #1 is correct, JJ should be G4 (Cavanaugh) in the larger red section. If #2 is true, then Heather should be G3 (Jarek) in the large red section. I’ll check option #2 at Gedmatch. I can lower the threshold as far as 3 cM. I think I used to be able to go lower:

Now I need to look at the position numbers. Crossover #3 should be a 113M:

Heather has a match with Robert from 110 to 113M. That means that Option #2 is in play and Heather has a maternal crossover at that point.

Problem solved.

More Maternal Side Matches Needed

I added 4 more matches on Heather and JJ’s maternal side and deleted the Hartley cousin:

This added some information for Chromosome 1:

However, because I had not deleted the extra columns to the right of the phasing part, the new matches stretched way out. Mat2 shows a match with JJ and Heather in HIR which cannot be right. When I check where the first FIR goes to HIR it is  just before 15M:

That is about where the match ends between Mat2 and Heather and JJ. Actually Heather’s match with Mat2 ends slightly further than JJ’s, so I’ll assume that Heather has more Jarek (G3) DNA there. However, I see that Robert has a match there also, which may be more accurate:

I guess the more matches, the better. I think that is as far as I can get with Chromosome 1. I just need to change the G’s to real grandparents.

I have one more trick up my sleeve. By searching my old Blogs, I did find a Cavanaugh side match at FTDNA. I have used DNA Painter to represent the matches for Heather:

This shows that my guess for Heather’s first Cavanaugh segment was correct. I just need to figure out how to find JJ’s matches at FTDNA. By going through a bunch of ID’s, I was able to find JJ at FTDNA. I couldn’t find Marti, but found a Martha:

More importantly, here is Heather and Martha using the FTDNA Chromosome Browser:

I would say that Martha and Marti are the same person. As it turns out, the match does not help any further with Chromosme 1.

Chromosome 2

The bottom match is with my mother, so the Rathfelder side.

LeeAnne Match on the Jarek Side

Here, I need to make an assumption. My assumption is that the right side of LeeAnne’s match with JJ and the right side of LeeAnne’s match with Heather represent crossovers. This is due to the fact that these end match positions are so close to the crossover positiions. There is a chance that these could be a coincidence, but I’ll take that chance.

In additions, I see that Heather and JJ match Martha on the Cavanaugh side beginning at 7M. That is where JJ’s match with LeeAnne ends. That ices that crossover for me.

This seems to be as far as I get right now:

The fact that there are so few crossovers on the Paternal side, means that almost all the crossovers are on the maternal side. This makes this Chromosome more difficult to map.

Chromosome 3

Just 21 more to go.

This looks fairly simple unless I am missing something. On the paternal side, it seems like there should be mostly Hartley. The blue match on the bottom represents Rathfelder. I see if I type in the names, I can skip the G1 and G2:

My next problem is that I don’t see any maternal side matches. I was ready to move on, but then checked MyHeritage. JJ matches Richard who has Polish ancestry:

Richard has an Anna Dziura. JJ has a Weronica Dziura:

These two could be sisters. Richard matches JJ on Chromosome 3:

All is not lost. Here is Richard and Heather:

They seem to match on Chromosome 3 in the same way.

Thanks to Robert, Chromosome 3 looks better for my children. This appears to be a mostly Hartley/Jarek Chromosome.

Chromosome 4

Here is what I get using my mother’s match and a Mat1 Jarek match:

Based on the the match of Mat1 with Heather and JJ, I would say that there is a maternal crossover to Cavanaugh to the left of the lowest Jarek on the map:

Also, note that there appear to be close crossovers between JJ and Heather indicated by the small black spaces in the comparison between JJ and Heather at the top of the chart. Heather shares DNA with Martha at the beginning of the Chromosome where JJ does not. This would indicate Cavanaugh DNA:

Also, JJ has a match with Martha here:

A Fully Phased Chromosome 4?

This is what I think is right:

However, one thing I would like to look at is the black break between 40 and 42M. I have no crossover there. I need to check that out more closely. Above, I note that JJ starts a match with Martha at 42M. That could be a crossover. Here is how Heather matches Martha:

Here is a corrected Chromosome 4:

The bottom red, yellow and green bar is helpful in checking to make sure the visual phasing matches with the comparison between Heather and JJ in the first bar above. Heather and JJ’s match with Martha was helpful in mapping Chromosome 4.

Chromosome 5

As usual, the paternal side is easy:

When I compare Robert’s matches with Heather and JJ, it points out a maternal crossover for JJ:

Here is Heather’s match with Martha on the Cavanaugh side:

JJ’s match goes further, so 160M is about the point of Heather’s crossover:

Next, I see that Mat3 has a match with JJ that doesn’t show with Heather:

This is at about 126 to 136M.

Going right on Heather’s bar, I can extend the matches:

This Chromosome is mostly completed except for the left side. There is a way to predict that side also. I just need to look at JJ or Heather’s matches to see which ones stop at the crossover and which ones do not. First, I need to find out where the crossover is. For that I go to the full resolution comparison between JJ and Heather at Gedmatch:

I’ll call that 32.5 M.

I have a list of Heather’s maternal matches that I downloaded in 2019:

The two maternal matches I have highlighted above appear to go through 32.5 M. However, I should also check with JJ’s results. I don’t see that JJ matches the same person. That makes me think that it is JJ who has the crossover at 32.5 M.

So, as I go along, I am remembering some of othe tricks of visual phasing. Here is the merged version:

Also, I have some position numbers as they are useful in mapping. Normally, there are not small isolated segments like Heather has on the right hand side (green Cavanaugh). This might be something to check.

Here is a maternal side match that Heather has:

This appears to pass through 149.7. I don’t see that JJ has a match with this person.

A Corrected Chromosome 5 for Heather and JJ

Chromosome 6

First I adjust the vertical lines and add in some of the position numbers:

Next, I check Heather and JJ’s match with their grandmother:

I see their matches do not line up well with the segment lines I have drawn. I suspect that the place where Heather and JJ both do not match with their grandmother should coincide with the green fully identical region between Heather and JJ. I’ll do a full resolution comparison between JJ and Heather to see where the green area is:

It starts at about 91.4M and:

ends at about 128.2M. These should correspond with these two match with Heather and JJ’s grandmother:

There is a bit of discrepancy between 126.6M and 128.2M.

That phases the paternal side for Heather and JJ:

However, I have no matches for Heather and JJ’s maternal side that were pre-loaded to the Fox Spreadsheet.

Let’s try Martha who matched at FTDNA on the Cavanaugh side;

Martha has two matches with JJ.  The first is roughly 7M to 42M. The second is:

The area above JJ’s green Cavanaugh must be Jarek for Heather as they don’t match at all in that region. The area above JJ’s second green Cavanaugh match must be Cavanaugh for Heather as this is an HIR or Half Identical Region. But first, let’s check on any match Heather has with Martha:

This points out a problem with my original mapping. Where JJ matchd from 7-42M, Heather matches from 4-14M. That means that I missed a segment here:

However, even that does not seem right. When I check at Gedmatch at a resolution of 3cM, I get this:

It’s odd how the comparison changes. [I explain my mistake further below.] Without any Jarek side matches, this is how Chromosome 6 is emerging:

At this point, I could look at Heather’s maternal match list to see where her likely crossovers are.

This 2019 list is a bit outdated. The last two matches are interesting. The last is with JJ and the next to the last goes through that match with JJ. That could indicate that JJ has a crossover at about 149. Here is JJ’s current match with that same person:

Here I added that crossover at 148.7 for JJ:

Using the same logic, I see this on Heather’s maternal match list:

Heather matches JJ from 72 to 135, but matches Sa from 68 to 92. That appears to give JJ a crosover at 72:

Unfortunately, this information is not helpful yet as I need to assign crossovers at 42.7M and 135M first.

Maternal Matches for JJ

I will check on JJ’s maternal matches to see if I can find some crossovers for Heather:

I didn’t realize I had this already and signed up for Tier I at Gedmatch. Oops.

Here I see two matches JJ has starting at 134.7M:

This could indicate a crossover for him at that point. Now that I have Tier I, I will use a utility called segment search and use Heather’s maternally phased kit:

 

Here Heather has an important match with Jayne that is between 130 and 147M. I’m not sure why the match did not show up on Heather’s spreadsheet as it is 2399 days old. That clinches JJ’s crossover at 134.7:

I can move the Cavanaugh segments to the left as there are already paternal crossovers there. This gives JJ a small Jarek segment which we don’t like to see, but it seems to fit as of now.

That leaves crossovers needed to be assigned at 42.7 and about 72M.

Above, Heather has a match that goes through 72M, so JJ must have a crossover there.

Above, Heather’s match with Sara goes through 68.7 also. Plus JJ would not have such a small Jarek segment. Unfortunately, this has resulted in an extra unwanted crossover here:

Under my original configuration, this was not as much a problem, but when I added the crossover at 14, it is now a problem.

Lastly, I would like to know what is going on at position 167M:

JJ has a lot of matches going through 167, so I will give the crossover to Heather:

Here I tried taking the crossover out at 14, but the segment checker at the bottom was off. Part of the problem was that I forgot to give Heather a crossover at 68.7.

This solution appears to work out. I had made another mistake in that I had the spreadsheet scrolled over so that I couldn’t see the first HIR. Then I added a second crossover that I didn’t need at 14M.

This version looks good, but may need some future adjusting:

There were fewer and smaller Jarek segments compared to Cavanaugh which could explain why there were not many Jarek matches on this Chromosome. It appears that this Chromosome could be a good one for looking for Cavanaugh side matches.

Summary and Conclusions

  • I had some fun brushing up on my visual phasing skills
  • Having JJ and Heather’s paternal grandmother tested made it easy to phase the paternal side
  • Most matches on JJ and Heather’ maternal side are on the Jarek side
  • There was one important maternal Cavanaugh side match at FTDNA
  • It should be possible in most cases to find who gets the maternal side crossovers by looking at JJ and Heather’s maternal match list or by doing a Segment Search on Heather and JJ’s maternally phased kits at Gedmatch.
  • I didn’t utilize this trick for the earlier chromosomes, so I will need to go back and do that at some point.
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Painting My Brother Jim’s DNA

For some reason, I have not gotten around to ‘painting’ my brother Jim’s DNA. This is what I have so far for Jim:

I’ve only gotten Jim up to 2% painted overall and that is just on the paternal Frazer side. It would be fairly easy to improve that.

Jim’s X Chromosome

For fun, I’ll start with Jim’s X Chromosome. This is just inherited from his mother. Jim matches our two Latvian cousins Inese and Anita. That DNA had to come from his great-grandmother Maria Elisabeth Laura Gangnus:

That is because Alexander Rathfelder only got X DNA from his mother Maria. I only painted Inese, because I believe that her sister’s match is very similar.

Jim and Cindy

Cindy is Jim’s first cousin. Normally I would not map 1st cousins as it would just give the maternal side. However, Cindy’s father is Bob and he just got his X Chromsome from his mother, who was Emma Rathfelder. It took me a little while to remember that trick. Here is the match between Jim and Cindy:

Jim is now 3% painted:

Back to Autosomal Matches

The fastest way to populate Jim’s chromosomes is by 2nd cousins. He has a lot of Hartley second cousins at Gedmatch. I’ll just go down Jim’s list of matches at Gedmatch.

Jim’s Hartley 1st Cousins Once Removed

Thes common ancestors between Jim and these older cousins go back to Jim’s great-grandparents: James Hartley and Annie Snell. First, I’ll paint in Joyce:

I picked a washed out color for Hartley/Snell as there will be so many of these. Jim is now up to 8% painted. Actually, Jim’s third Hartley match was with a second cousin. Beth brings Jim’s painted percent up to 12%:

2nd Cousin Catherine on the Rathfelder Side

So far, I have only added maternal DNA to Jim’s X Chromosome. That has Jim only 2% maternally painted. Here is the addition of Catherine in a sort of grey:

This has Jim 7% painted on his maternal side and 15% painted overall.

3 More on the Rathfelder Side

Jim is now up to 19% overall:

I haven’t used the grey color before, so this is new.

Kathy, Judy and Carolyn

I haven’t been able to figure out how I am related to Kathy. I’ll leave her out for now. She is likely a descendant of William Nicholson like Judy and Carolyn are:

However, Judy has closer common ancestors in Annie Nicholson and Jacob George Lentz.

Jim is getting more color and I have added a line between the paternal and maternal side in the key. Jim is now mapped at 21% overall.

Pat, Joan and Martin

Pat is a 2nd cousin on my Hartley side. Joan is on the Nicholson side and Martin is on the Rathfelder side. I know how Pat, Joan and Jim are related. I’ll have to look up Martin. I see that he knew little about his father due to the cold war.

Paul, Robert, Michael, Faye and Ken

Robert is on the Nicholson side, while Paul, Michael, Faye and Ken are on the Frazer side. Michael adds another Frazer ancestral couple:

This shows how Michael and I are related as Jim is not at Ancestry. Richard Frazer has an unknown wife. Ancestry has a guess at Mary Patterson. These matches bring Jim up to 25% painted using the online DNA Painter Program:

Here, I’ve sorted Jim’s key into his four grandparent groups:

Summary

With not too much effort, I have gotten Jim’s DNA Painter Map from 2% to 25%.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Painting Some French Canadian DNA for My Wife’s Side

MyHeritage’s Theories of Relativity are a good way to check genealogies. They come with ready made DNA connections and genealogical connections. This lends itself to the DNA Painter Program which I use.

My Wife’s Aunt Virginia

These Theories are sortable by newest, so I will do that for Aunt Virginia (also known as Aunt Suzy). I tend to reject the Theories that don’t go along with my previous research as I tend to think my research has been done pretty well.

Denise

One of the first Theories (from newer to older) that I found that has prospects is with Denise:

Denise shows as 5th cousin to Virginia. This is on the LeFevre side. First, I check my tree at ancestry:

 

Unfortunately, I don’t have siblings listed for Angelique Delisle. I aslo do not have her birth information. I see that Ancestry has Angelique’s Baptismal record:

 

This tree at Ancestry has other siblings for Angelique:

Joachim is a logical name for the son of Joachim Delisle. I’ll go ahead and add a lot of information from this tree to mine. Next, all I need is a baptismal record for Joachim born 1783. I did not find his baptism as a hint, but his marriage record will do:

This record gives his parents’ names. That tells me that the tree at least from the top connecting Virginia and Denis is accurate. Next, I will add the DNA match to see if it makes sense. Unfortunately, the first match is just below the cutoff of 7.0 cM:

I would like to add the match on Chromosome 5 as it overlaps with other LeFevre DNA:

Denis’ match is from 28 to 46 M and represents:

Lazare LeFevre.

Painting Denise

Here I lower the lime to 6 cM:

Here I added a new color for DeLisle and Matte which is dark green. As Denise overlaps on Chromosome 5, that means that the LeFevre DNA in yellow and orange is actually DeLisle DNA. The fact that there is no overlap on Chromosome 6 indicates that the yellow LeFevre DNA is probably older LeFevre DNA and that there is a crossover between the green and yellow DNA. The darker red DNA on Chromosme 6 may be misattributed or due to intermarriage as I have it attributed to Methot which is not an obvious ancestor of LeFevre.

Here is Virginia’s DNA map with added dark green:

Some of the yellow DNA got overwritten by the darker orange on Chromosome 5 when the DNA is not expanded.

Virginia and Annie

This is the relationship we are looking at:

Here is my Ancestry Tree for my wife’s side:

The J F as Eustache is for Jacques-Francois. I have some children, but not Joseph:

There is only one tree I see at Ancestry under hints which has a Joseph:

According to this, Marie Judith Tremblay had 20 children. Wow.

Here is part of Annie’s Tree:

Here is a record I found at Ancestry:

It would seem logical to look for a marriage for Joseph and Marie, though these are common names. One detail from the above is that Joseph was a Journalier:

Here is his marriage:

For some reason, I don’t see his parents listed. This marriage was in 1834. If he was 25 when he married, that would put his birth at about 1811. Here is a Jude born in 1812:

However, this appeaers to be a burial record.

At this point, I’ll just paint in the DNA match and see if it makes sense.

Painting Annie

Most of Annie’s DNA would make sense, though I don’t have a lot painted on the Pouliot side so far:

Again I kept the 6 cM cutoff:

I gave Fortin/Tremblay a periwinkle color. Before I refreshed the settings, Virginia was 36% painted on her maternal side and only 22% painted overall. Annie brought her up to 23% overall and 37% overall.

Suzy and Cecile

These two show as 5th cousins along Suzy’s Pouliot side. A few things seem irregular such as Virginia’s Girard being private and a deleted profile in Cecile’s ancestry. I can see from my tree who the missing person is on Virginia’s tree:

Cecile’s tree suppies some more detail:

I now need to figure out if Gregoire was the sister of Marie Genevieve. Based on this, it appears that there is a generation missing on Cecile’s side of the Theory of Relativity. What I need to do is prove that Elysee and Marie Genevieve were siblings.

More on Marie Genevieve

I need to spruce up my tree for Marie Genevieve. Here is a marriage record from 1804

This would put Marie Genevieve’s birth at around 1784. This appears to be her birth record:

The place and father is right, but the mother’s name is off:

I suppose the Marie part is right as I have the mother as Marie Josephte Tremblay. Here is the location:

Elysee Girard

I am having trouble tracking this person, so I will stop at this point.

Aunt Virginia and Lucien

The problem with Lucien is that his father shows as being born in 1860. Does that sound reasonable?

My Late Father-in-Law Richard

Richard matches with Annie aslo, so I don’t have to recreate the wheel with this connection. Annie matched on Fortin/Tremblay. This is on Richard’s Pouliot side:

In Richard’s Maternal side key, the Pouliot side is meant to be on the bottom. I don’t see Fortin/Tremblay there, so I can add that. Here are two Chromosomes where Annie shows up:

On Chromosome 1, Annie adds older DNA between Pouiot DNA. On Chromosome 10, Annie overlaps on even older DNA. This actually represents intermarriage as the connection is probably with an older Tremblay Line:

Annie fills in some blanks on Richard’s Chromosomes 12 and 17:

She also brings his maternal side painted percentage up to 45% from 44%:

Sylvain and Richard

Sylvain is #2 on Richard’s most recent Theory of Relativity after Annie:

Here I skipped a few generations at the bottom, but Richard and Sylvain show as 5th cousins. This is also on the Pouliot side. Here, it would be important to show that Alexis and Genevieve Gagne are siblings. Here my tree is a bit skimpy:

Here is a tree at Ancestry that implies that Genevieve died quite young:

At this time, I will attempt a shortcut. Richard has a cousin who shows at MyHeritage named Fred. Fred is also at Ancestry which means that Fred has ThruLines.

Fred is third from the right. Fred has ThruLines with 11 of these Gagne Children. Fred, like my father-in-law, descends from Alexis and has 33 DNA matches on that line. Here are the details for Marie-Genevieve:

Fred shows matches to daughters Olive and Marie-Euphrosine Gagnon. I was looking for Theophile Martel born 1790. Well that shortcut did not work. Time to abort this mission.

Richard and Jean-Francois

Let’s see if I have any better luck with Jean-Francois. First I check to see if I have already mapped or ‘painted’ Jean-Francois to Richard’s chromosomes and I have not. Here is the Theory:

Jean-Francois shows as a 4th cousin once removed to Richard, so a bit closer relationship. Here, I will check to see if Elisee and Judith are siblings. I’m going to use Fred’s ThruLines at Ancestry as a surrogate again:

Here I see that Fred has 16 DNA matches with descendants of Judith. I take that as a good sign. In fact, I have Judith in my Tree already. I’ll say that the proof is good enough to map Jean-Francois.

Here is how Richard and Jean-Francois match by DNA:

I recently added Fortin/Tremblay to Richard’s map, so time to map this new match:

On Chromosome 1, Jean-Francois overlaps with Annie mapped previously.

Above, Jean-Francois fills in some gaps.

Richard and Martin

This would be a Pouliot line that I have not mapped if the genealogy seems correct. I am tempted to again check on Fred’s ThruLines.

Fred has Antoine instead of Charles. That doesn’t mean the MyHeritage connection is wrong. I checked Richard’s two sisters’ ThruLines and no connection there either. Here is a detail from Martin’s tree:

If this is correct and Charly’s mother was born in 1844, then she would have been 62 when giving birth to Charly which doesn’t sound right. With some more work, I could probably make some of these connections, but I won’t right now. There is perhaps a generation missing.

Updating Aunt Lorraine

Here is Aunt Lorraine’s ‘painted’ Chromosome Map as 23% painted overall:

Most of the DNA identified is on Lorraine’s maternal French Canadian side. She is currently 23% painted overall and 38% painted on her maternal side.

Lorraine and Marjorie

This connection goes back to the 1700’s. This connection does not look right. I have a different mother at the top:

If this is right, then there must be a generation missing on Marjorie’s side. I’ll skip this for now. Lorriane also has a Theory with Myriam with the same issue.

Lorraine and Denise

I had painted Denise above with Aunt Suzy. The connection was with DeLisle and Matte:

Denise fills in some gaps on Lorraine’s Chromosomes 6 and 17. This brings Lorraine up to 39% painted maternally and 24% overall.

Lorraine and Paul

These two have a small DNA match. I already have a Michel in my tree, so I’ll say the connection is OK.

I didn’t hadd the smaller match as it was below 7 cM.

Lorraine and Jean-Francois

I mapped Jean-Francois to one of her siblings above, so I’ll map him to her profile also:

Jean-Francois supplies overlapping Pouliot DNA evidence on Chromosomes 3 and 4.

I decided to change this match color to blue for greater contrast:

Lorraine is up to 40% painted on her maternal side now.

Bernadette: 5th Cousin to Lorraine

This would take more work. How would Angelique Delisle be the daughter of a Lalonde?

Lorraine and a Different Martin

When I look up Girard/Tremblay trees, they all show a daughter Emerentienne born 1795. Likewise, Lorraine’s ThruLines show Emerentienne:

Here is where Martin shows up on Lorraine’s DNA Map:

Lorraine and Another Denise

I hope that these repeating names do not cause problems in the future:

I see at least one Ancestry tree with a Jean Francois Louis, so that is hopeful.

Here the DNA points out a problem as Denise is overlapping on LeFevre side and should be on the Pouliot side. That means that it is likely that Lorraine matches Denise on Lorraine’s LeFevre side and not her Pouliot side.

Lorraine and Douglas

I am going further with Lorraine than I went with Suzy or Richard:

We see again the name or Emerentienne. It helps to see unusual names. I’ll just go ahead and map Douglas based on the assumption that the tree is correct.

Douglas brings up another problem on Chromosome 6. By the genealogy, he should be on the Pouliot side, but he overlaps with DeLisle who is on the LeFevre side.

Check Lorraine’s Visual Phasing

I have done some work to figure out which part of Lorraine’s Chromosome 6 is Pouliot and which is LeFevre:

Lorriane is the top. The important part is where Pouliot goes to LeFevre or salmon to blue. If the scale on the bottom matches correctly, that should be at about 136M. So after 136M is LeFevre and before is Pouliot.

This shows Douglas’ match to be up to 135M. So that may actually be the inflection point, more typically called the crossover. That means that if I did my visual phasing correctly, then Douglas is mapped properly as Pouliot. That also means that Denise should be matching on the Pouliot side and has a connection there. I checked Denise’s match on Chromosome 17 and that should be in the region of Pouliot also.

Pouliot starts for Lorraine at 26M and Denise’s match starts at 39M.

Lorraine and Louise

This could go on forever, but I think I’ll end it here:

I see several trees at ancestry with a Marie Ann which I take to be Anne Marie above. She also shows on Lorraine’s ThruLines:

Again with reckless abandon, I will paint this match onto Lorraine’s map:

Here I made a mistake and created a new group. Then I merged it back with the old group and changed the color to purple for contrast. Louise’s matches overlap with Jean-Pierre. It turns out that Louise is related to Jean-Pierre in this way:

Summary and Conclusion

  • It seemed I got better at the mapping as I went along
  • I tried to skip any sketchy connections or situations where the MyHeritage Theories showed multiple common ancestors
  • One conflict was seemingly solved through Visual Phasing
  • It could take a while to map all the French Canadian Matches as these three siblings have so many matches