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Mapping My Wife’s French Canadian Side with DNAPainter

In my previous Blog, I wrote about my wife’s French Canadian Clusters at Ancestry using her late Aunt Lorraine’s results. This got me interested in mapping my wife’s French Canadian side using DNA Painter. While Ancestry is very useful, it is not useful in mapping DNA as it has no chromosome browser.
That means that it does not have specific information on what Chromosome your DNA match is on.

Marie’s Dad

Richard’s maternal side or French Canadian side:

Richard is 45% mapped. I would like to get this up to 50%. In my last Blog, I was running into problems due to incorrect trees and intermarriage on the French Canadian side.

I’ll start with FTDNA as that site uses the X Chromosome also. I wonder if I can figure out more about Richard’s X Chromosome. Rejeanne has an X Match with Richard:

I actually found Rejeanne at MyHeritage and there is a Theory for her:

This theory looks plausible. From Richard it goes all the way back on the maternal side. Rejeanne has one man, but that is possible, because he would have received his X Chromosome from his mother and passed it intact to his daughter. For this to work, it appears that Louis Girard would have to have had two wives (or perhaps the genealogy is wrong).

Here is the closest link I could find at Ancestry:

This assumes that Pierre-Louis Girard is the same as Louis Marie Henri Girard. Also Louis Marie Henri would have had to have been about 14 or 16 when he married Emerance. This does not seem likely.

Trying Gedmatch

I can see why I have so little matched as it is difficult to track these matches down. Here is Diane at Gedmatch. She is also at Ancestry:

.

Here is her match at Gedmatch (to Richard).

I can now accept Diane’s connection to Lorraine or see if she fits into my wife’s family tree as suggested. I’ll add Diane to my tree as a floating tree and then connect her if it works out.

 

This is Diane’s mother’s marriage record. Unfortunately, her mother’s mother’s last name is transcribed as Semena. I see Simard, though the i is not dotted.

Here is the marriage record for Virginie;

Everything is going smoothly so far:

Except Ozias and Mathilde should not be living. Next, I am looking for Ozias’ mother. Here is the family in 1861:

Genealogists have to appreciate the maiden name of the mother showing in the Census. I’m coming down the home stretch:

The marriage records are quite helpful:

This couple marries in 1842 in St. Urbain:

Next, I need to connectj Jean Baptiste to Jean Marie Tremblay. The writing for Jean Baptiste’s 1819 marriage record is not all that clear:

I will be happy to take the transcription suggestion:

The writing gets even worse for the marriage of Jean Tremblay and Constance Poitvin:

Time to Paint Donna

Here is Donna on Richard’s Chromosomes 2 and 9:

Dona paints a new area on Chromosome 2.

Here are Chromosomes 16 and 22:

There is some conflict on Chromosome 16 as Christine represents Delisle on the Lefevre side. So it is possible I got that connection wrong or there may be more than one connection.

Here is how my wife’s Aunt Lorraine matches Diane at Gedmatch:

Diane adds to Lorraine’s Chromosome2 and 4:

Diane’s match also overlaps with some more recent Pouliot matches on Chromosome 6.

Diane is consistent with other matches on Chromosome 16 and provides Lorraine’s first maternal match on Chromosome 22.

My Wife’s Aunt Suzy

Suzy’s real name is Virginia, just to add to the confusion.

Suzy has a smaller match with Diane at Gedmatch:

Donna paints new regions of DNA on Suzy’s chart:

I like to have lighter colors for the more recent common ancestors and darker colors for the more distant common ancestors, but this takes a while to work out.

Summary and Conclusions

  • It seems like it should be easy to paint to one’s chromosomes, but when I go to try it, it is quite difficult
  • In the past, the best options have been looking at Gedmatch for someone who has their information at Ancestry. That was the case here also with Diane
  • I may want to try to paint some more on my Hartley side next time.
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Looking at My Wife’s Side French Canadian Clusters at Ancestry

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.

 

 

 

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Looking for Pilling Clusters at Ancestry

In this Blog, I would like to look for Pilling matches. I have a motive for this. Those who are descended just from Pilling will not be descended from Hartley. Theoretically, I could eliminate some of my matches from my Hartley ancestor search. As it is, when I look at many of my Hartley DNA matches, it seems like some of them could be Pilling relatives.

So as I think of the matches, it occurs to me that going forward in time from Mary Pilling, there would be matches that descend from Mary Pilling. However, going back from Mary Pilling, there should be no Hartley descendants that match us unless it is by coincidence. Hmmm…

Pilling Genealogy and ThruLines

I believe that my genealogy is right for Mary Pilling:

However, when I look at the ThruLines for my father’s 1st cousin Joyce, I see this:

This shows Horsfall coming from Robert. Robert died in 1835. May Pilling Hartley remarries Robert Wilkinson and has more children. I thought that the ThruLines were more messed up than they are. When I look at Joyce’s ThruLines for Mary Pilling, it looks correct:

That means that Ruth would be a great person of interest in looking at Pilling Clusters.

When I look at another of my father’s first cousins’ ThruLines, I see this:

Derek has an even larger match with Maury at 42 cM.

Maury’s Pilling Clusters

Maybe my chances of finding Pilling Clusters would be better with Maury than with Joyce.

I was thinking I should see an overall cluster, but I don’t see it.

The first group is the closest group of matches:

EB has a private tree, but according to shared matches, he is a nephew of Derek.

Cluster 2 includes two people from the Wilkinson Line:

Cluster 3

This seems to expand past the children of John Pillng born 1822 for the first three matches of this cluster. This tells me that there are two different groups, but Norman appears to be matched to both. This appears to be where the matches have gone from the known (Pilling and Wilkinson) to the unknown.

Cluster 4

Now that I have not figured out Cluster 3, I will move on to Cluster 4:

This represents the ultimate representation of Pilling clusters that I am aware of on my side’s matches. This would be one interpretation:

I was thinking that the first cluster were people who descended from Mary Pilling. However, George is a new match.

When I look at George’s shared matches, he comes out close to the Wilkinson side. Perhaps I can fit him in. George has an unlinked tree:

George’s mother is from Massachusetts. Perhaps that is a clue.

I don’t know if I have a better Pilling DNA tree, but this one looks like it could use some updating – especially on the Wilkinson side:

I’ll add George to my tree as a floating tree.

I’ll go with the findagrave hint at Ancestry for Barbara – Geoge’s mother:

In 1950 George Nelson is a Taxi Driver living in New Bedford:

His sister Barbara A Nelson is listed in the same household on the next page:

The house is in the Sassaquin neighborhood of New Bedford:

Here is Barbara in one tree at Ancestry:

That same tree has father George Nelson dying before 1930. However, if that is the case, how can he be the father of Barbara Ann Nelson born 1931? This appears to indicate that George died in 1930:

Here is the family in 1940, but where is Barbara? She should have been about 8 or 9 at the time.

It appears that it is not easy for me to trace this match back to Wilkinson and Pilling.

More on William Wilkinson

Shared matches seem to indicate that the George match above could be a 2nd cousin to Richard and Paul:

That could mean that they both descend from William Wilkinson born in 1879. Here is Willia a death certificate for Wilkinson in 1936:

At the time, he was living at Lindsey Street, New Bedford:

Lindsey runs between North Street and Court Street. That confirms that this must be William in the 1930 Census:

According to Paul’s Tree at Ancestry, William had a second wife:

Back to the Clusters

George is somehow connected to the Wilkinson side, but I do not know how exactly. The next cluster is from from Ann Hartley. She was the daughter of Greenwood Hartley who was the son of Mary Pilling.

The Third Cluster

  1. Elliot
  2. Talia
  3. Jane
  4. Catherine

Jane and Catherine are in the order of 1st cousins to Maurey.

They descend from James Hartley. Cluster 2 descend from James’ sister Ann Hartley Burrows.

Elliot and Talia

Elliot’s family appears to be from Tasmania:

As Elliot’s tree only goes to about the year 1900, it would take quite a bit of work to trace it back to the Pilling family.

Cluster 4

The last person in the last cluster has this possible connection:

Victoria fits in with the theory that these should be Pilling clusters. However, the tree goes back quite far. The further a tree goes back, there are more possible ways that something could have gone wrong. Here is the earliest Howorth that Victoria has:

The information looks a little vague. I don’t mind trying a quick tree to see what I get. It looks like I already checked this out in 2019:

I have Edmund’s son Edmund born in Bacup. This is interesting as this is where the Emmet side of family lived. After a quick look at the ThruLines, I do not see an easy connection.

Summary and Conclusions

  • Looking at the Pilling Clusters gave me a different perspective on this family and their descendants
  • The largest result gave me four clusters. These were: Pilling/Wilkinson, Descendants of Ann Hartley Burrows, descendants of James Hartley her brother and a fourth presumably earlier group of Pillings.
  • My assumption was that I would get a list of Pilling descendants that I could eliminate from my list of earlier Hartley descendants. It did not seem to work out that way and/or I did not look at a list to subtract them from
  • I found an interesting match to the Wilkinson line, but could not figure out how he is connected.

 

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An Overview of Upshall Clusters for My Wife’s Great-Aunt Esther

My wife has a late great-aunt Esther who is actually a half Aunt. That means that she matches by DNA on only half of my mother-in-law’s maternal side. This is my mother-in-law’s tree:

My mother-in-law and Aunt Esther match on the Upshall side and not the Daley side. Fred Upshall first married Elizabeth Daley. She died in the Flu Epidemic. He then married Margaret Shave and Esther descends from her.

Here is Esther’s tree:

Esther’s grandfather was born in 1841. That was before there were good records in Harbour Buffet, Newfoundland where the family lived. I believe that a church burned down which did not help in the record department. There are Burtons and Dicks on both sides of Esther’s tree and her parents were related to each other in some way or ways.

Esther’s Standard Clusters

Here we see 5 clusters. Clusters 4 and 5 look like they could be connected.

  1. In this cluster, I recognize everyone as farily close family to my wife except for Stephen
  2. This Cluster has my wife’s aunt – my mother-in-law’s only sister.
  3. I don’t recognize anyone right away. It is a paternal cluster as are all the clusters.
  4. My later mother-in-law Joan is in this cluster. She matches all people in all clusters by at least 65 cM except for Grace
  5. I don’t recognize anyone right away in this three match cluster.

Here is Esther’s paternal side:

After briefly reviewing the clusters, this is what I get:

  • In cluster 1, the matches were too close except for Stephen
  • In Cluster 3, the was one Upshall suggestion and one Dicks suggestion

Stephen in Cluster 1

Stephen’s closest matches with suggested common ancestors are Danielle and Catherine. Here is Danielle:

Neither Danielle nor Catherine are on Esther’s Stard Cluster chart.

Here is Catherine:

So this could be a Dicks Cluster. De

Summary and Conclusions

  • All of Esther’s Standard Clusters are on her paternal side. This could be because many who have tested are also on her paternal side.
  • Esther’s parents were related to each other, so some of the DNA results could be confusing
  • Delving more into the extended clusters would give more results on Esther’s maternal side. However, that is of less interest to my wife’s family as they are related to her on her paternal side.
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Clusters on My Mother-In-Law’s Side: Ellis and Uphsall

Let’s look at Joan’s standard clusters. Here is Joan’s tree:

Joan’s ancestors are what I would call Canadian Maritime.

Here are the standard clusters:

The note at the top suggests she has over 100 matches, so there is no overall display.

I’ll start from the bottom and work up.

The 3 match cluster is Rhynold.

The first 4 match cluster from the bottom suggests Dicks as it has this match:

Checking Shirley’s Tree

I’ll create a floating tree for Shirley and then connect it to mine if it looks right.

Shirley has a private tree, but I am guessing that her father and grandfather at least could be right. Ancestry suggests this source, perhaps from Shirley’s tree:

Here is a clue for Ignatius also:

Here is Rushoon compared to Harbour Buffet where Joan’s ancestors came from:

Here is the 1921 Census showing where Joseph was born:

This is my guess for the marriage of Joseph Dicks:

However, the marriage is in a Methodist Church and Ignatius was apparently Roman Catholic. The name Ignatious would be Roman Catholic. In addition the 1921 Census says the family was Roman Catholic.

This is probably where the match would occur on my Dicks DNA Tree:

I can see that I am getting into too much detail at this time, so I will try to give an overview of Joan’s standard clusters at Ancestry starting from the smaller clusters to the largest.

Joan’s Standard Cluster Summary

These will be based where available on the suggested common ancestors. Here are the first 8 clusters starting with the smallest on the bottom;

#CA means how many matches show potential common ancestors at Ancestry. Interestingly for Cluster 8, three had Rayner/Hopgood from 1849 and one had Hopgood Watson. That tells me that is likely a Hopgood rather than a Rayner Cluster.

Here, I have added some paternal/maternal coloring:

Here is the entire list:

I had thought the results would get more complicated as the number of matches went up. However, the largest cluster was a fairly recent one. I expect that is because there were some fairly large Ellis families. Under ThruLines, Joan has 44 matches under Ellis/Gorrill:

These matches are under 10 children of this Ellis couple.

I have a note under Burton/Lawrence. That is a pair of potential ancestors. I note that Esther was a match there. She was a half Aunt to Joan.  On the half side that she doesn’t match Joan, there are extra Burton ancestors if I remember correctly. Joan’s paternal side was from Prince Edward Isle, so going back in time, there would be some intermarriage. Also on Joan’s maternal side, many were from Harbour Buffet. This was an isolated place with intermarriage.

Summary and Conclusions

  • This was a survey of Joan’s larger matches. She has over 100, so the overall cluster did not show at Ancestry
  • I perhaps made a mistake in getting into the ancestry on one of the proposed common ancestors. This takes a while and was not really needed for this overview.
  • Perhaps because these were close matches, every cluster had suggested potential ancestors from Ancestry. There are actually more known common ancestors, but Ancestry only shows the ones that have trees and of those only those who have linked trees.
  • 6 of Joan’s clusters were maternals and 9 were paternal. I am not really sure why this is not more even. My guess is that is due to there being more descendants that tested DNA on the paternal side.
  • The cluster that I didn’t identify could be that there were multiple common ancestors around the same time.
  • It would make sense to look at Aunt Esther’s clusters as she is a half Aunt. As a result she only matches on the Upshall side.

 

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Playing with My Children’s Expanded Clusters at Ancestry – French Morrow Side

Expanded Clusters are a good new genetic genealogy tool at Ancestry.

I am more interested in my children’s maternal side as I know more about the paternal side (me). Here is my children’s mom’s tree:

The top half is polish and the bottom is Irish (Warren), English (Gatley) and French Canadian (Morrow/Tacy/Tessier).

Morrow

As I look at my daughter Heather’s ThruLines, I see this:

That is not very encouraging as it is such a small match. I can try clusters based on Erica, but many of these clusters work on a 20 cM match and Erica only matches by 12 cM. I’ll try to cluster on Erica anyway.

This results in 2 clusters. Not bad.

Therese is probably Erica’s niece. Therese has a larger match to Heather, but no tree.

Going back to the larger cluster, it seems everyone is related:

It seems like there are a lot of holes in this side of the tree:

So perhaps I need the genealogy to find more matches and more matches to support the genealogy. At this point, I am skeptical concerning Mary A Cassion’s surname. I did a surname search under Heather’s DNA match names and got no results.

Morrow Genealogy

The 1880 Census for Lowell seems significant:

Here older brother Dennis Morrow has married Sarah Whalen. But where are Dennis’ parents? He is now the head of the househould with his two younger brothers and a brother-in-law. If I can find the birth record for any of these three brothers, I should have the names of the parents.

I was able to find the Roman Catholic record for Dennis’ marriage:

Both witnesses are on the Whalen side.

Apparently Dennis remarries in 1916:

Here we have the mother of Dennis:

My best reading is Mary A Casson. At any rate, she dies in 1876. Her husband dies in 1879. That explains the 1880 Census above.

I asked Google if Morrow is a French Canadian name:

I find it frustrating that I am not able to find this family in Quebec. According to Dennis, he was born in Quebec:

Here is his brother Joseph:

The death record for Joseph in Providence gives some more information:

Here we have his middle name and a different name for his mother. Also, this indicates that his mother was from Ireland. Here the mother’s name is given as Rose Cassin from what I can tell. Another interesting thing is that Joseph dies of gas poison “probably” accidentaly. The informant is his daughter Nellie Glancy. This death record appears to contradict some of the other records concerning Mary or Rose Cassin.

Here is a stone from St. Patrick’s Cemetery in Lowell, MA:

While looking through Naturalization papers I found a different Joseph Morrow who was naturalized in Maine but from New Brunswick;

This is a possible hint to his last name.

Back to the Cluster

MK on the Heather’s cluster above has a tree with a little over 70,000 people. Here is one branch of his tree:

There is even a Jean- Baptiste in the line. I suspect that Joseph Frederick’s father was a Jean-Baptiste (John B.). Here is Louis from MK’s tree:

Here is another tree for Louis at Ancestry:

Actually, this is a Joseph born around the time I was looking for a John B.

Another thing is, that this match with Erica could be on the Tessier side:

Summary and Conclusions

  • I tried to use Heather’s expanded clusters to ferret out some more genealogy on her Morrow side
  • I had trouble with the genealogy as it appears the Morrow name could have be Moreau, Morin, Morot, Morault or something else perhaps.
  • There was one small match between Erica and Heather of 12 cM. This seems small for a 3rd cousin and JJ did not match Erica at all
  • One shared match suggests that the Morrow name could have been Morin. However, the match could also be on the Tessier/Tacy side which is not known to be related to the Morrow side.
  • While researching Joseph Morrow I found some interesting details about his death.

 

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Some Butler DNA Clusters at Ancestry

Since Ancestry enhanced their clusters, I thought that I would try them out on my wife’s Butler Line. I have two of my wife’s tested at Ancestry.

Here is my wife’s father’s paternal line:

Here is my wife’s Aunt Lorraine’s ThruLines on the third cousin level:

Patty seems like a good choice to try to cluster on.

I got some results, so that is good. Here is the 6 match cluster:

I believe that all these descend from George Butler of Cincinatti.

Here is the 19 Match cluster:

Here Patrick is interesting. What I am seeing is that there are two major clusters and Patrick is in-between the two. Patrick is the son of Will:

The common ancestor between Patrick and Lorraine is likely George Butler. He was born some time in the 1700’s and likely from Wexford, Ireland. Lorraine is Will’s 4th cousin once removed and an important DNA match.

Patty is in the cluster above Patrick. This is likely the Cincinnati cluster descending from the George in the DNA tree above.

The cluster below Patrick appears to be from another George. This George was the son of Edward Butler who confusingly also had the birth name of Adam. Edward was the brother of the George who moved to Cincinnati.

So here is what I think I have:

This is what one blogger calls walking back the ancestors.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of Georges here. The lower right corner of the pink cluster is from George Butler born 1872 and brother of Edward Henry Butler born 1875. Patrick descends from the George in the upper right hand corner of the Ancestry tree above. The upper left corner of the pink cluster descend from George Butler born 1826 and brother of Edward “Adam” Butler. I find it satisfying to be able to see all these connections in one place using Ancestry Clusters.

Lorraine’s 30 Match Butler Cluster with Patty

This is no doubt a more detailed picture of the previous pink cluster:

T

Top right is Cincinnati Butlers. Will and Patrick are from Butlers that never came to the US. The tighter cluster is from George Butler. He moved to Massachusetts. I cannot place the last 5 in the bottom right. Lisa has Murphy and other ancestors from Wexford. It is possible that some matches go beyond what we know about in the area of genealogy. This view also includes Patrick’s father Will.

Virginia and Brian

Brian comes up as a large match to the Butler family. He is a fourth cousin to Virginia who is another of my wife’s Aunts. My guess is that Virginia’s clusters with Brian should look very similar ot Lorraine’s clusters with Patty.

 

 

It is a little different. The upper left cluster is the George Butler born 1826 in Wexford, moved to Cincinnati. Actually the common ancestor between Brian and Virginia should be Henry Butler born about 1800 in Wexford – not George born 1826 as stated earlier in the Blog.

Then within that Cluster is Will and Patrick. The common ancestor between them and Virginia is Henry Butler’s father and George Butler and his unknown wife.

The third cluster would also have the common ancestor of Henry Butler but this cluster represents the desendants through Edward Henry Butler down to his son George Butler born in 1872.

Summary and Conclusions

  • Running clusters for my wife’s two late Aunts confirm my previous DNA and genealogical research.
  • Two important matches are Will and Patrick. They bring the Butler connection back another generation in Wexford, Ireland. Their DNA matches also tie together two other branches descending from two son sons of Henry Butler of Wexford: a George Butler Branch who remained in Cincinnati and a Edward Butler Branch who lived for a while in Cincinnati but who eventually moved to Massachusetts.
  • There is also a connection with Brian who descends from the Cincinnait branch, but one branch moved to St Johns, New Brunswick. This connection is important as that is where Edward Butler lived briefly and married Mary Crowley before moving to Cincinnati and eventually to Massachusetts.
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Clusters from My Mom’s Latvian Side

Let’s look at my mom’s clusters. These should include Rathfelder, Nicholson and Lentz for starters.

Standard Clusters for Gladys Rathfelder

These had to be refreshed:

  • Orange is Lentz, but really Lentz/NIcholson.
  • The next cluster is Nicholson/Ellis
  • The third cluster is also NIcholson/Ellis. So perhaps one cluster favors Nicholson and the other Ellis
  • For some reason there are no Rathfelder or Latvian clusters

A Custom Rathfelder Cluster

My mom has a good match here with Donna:

Maria was the wife of my mother’s grandfather who was Johann Heinrich Rathfelder. I’ll choose Donna as the match of interest for the custom Rathfelder Clusters.

Donna is the fourth match down. The first cluster is along the Gangus Line:

Here is the second cluster:

Here is the only hint I see from that Cluster:

However, I have never checked this out. One tree at Ancestry has this:

That means the Johann on the right above could be Johann Jacob. I suppose mine could be Cornelius Johannes. However, for now, I will leave it be.

Clusters with Gladys and Catherine

Catherine has a slightly lower DNA match to my mom compared to Donna, but a closer relationship:

Catherine is a 2nd cousin once removed and Donna is a 2nd cousin twice removed to my mom.

It is interesting how different the two clusters look (between Gladys and Donna and Gladys and Catherine). Under this, there are two sub-clusters. Here is the first:

Here are some more loose clusters. Here is match number 5:

Match number 4 has a similar connection and is probably a sister. This Hans Jerg Rathfelder married a Biedenbender.

Here is how Valdis matches:

Here is a guess as to what is happening:

Here is some more support. Karin is related to Valdis. Here is J.S.:

But how does Kirk fit in?

This tells me that the second cluster is actually a Gangnus Cluster:

Valdis, Karin and JS were Schwechheimer/Gangnus. But Kirk show that the match was really on the Gangnus side of that couple. This cluster also distinguishes from the Gangnus line on my Rathfelder grandfather’s maternal side.

 

The clusters are very specific.

Matthew appears to be a new match:

Checking Out Matthew’s Line

I don’t see Matthew on my Gangnus DNA Tree:

I do see Maria Senta in the excellent genealogy on the Gangnus family by Gustav Gangnus. I can trace the line back to Johann Jacob Gagnus, but it gets confusing as this man had 19 children with two wives. Matthew descends from the first wife and Patrick, Kevin, Leva and my mom descend from the second wife.

Here I have added in Matthew to my Gangnus DNA Tree:

This makes Matthew a half third cousin twice removed to Gladys. The shared DNA is all Gangnus.

How Does Reinhold Fit In?

Here is what Ancestry shows:

However, Reinhold shows up in my Gangnus DNA Tree:

He is also a fourth cousin once removed. On Matthew’s side of the tree, Reinhold is a 5th cousin once removed also:

The left side of the tree represents the paternal Gangnus side and the right side of the tree above represents the maternal side of the Gangnus matches. Rienhold appears to be matching on the maternal Gagnus side if I understand the clusters correctly even though that is the more distant relationship.

This is the part of the cluster that is easier to figure out due to common ancestors that have been confirmed by genealogy:

Summary and Conclusions

  • By using different matches of interest, I was able to get very different results. The second person of interest gave easier answers, probably just by the chance people they matched by DNA.
  • I added a new match to my Gangnus DNA Tree
  • I was able to identify a likely Rathfelder cluster and two different Gangnus clusters: one on my grandfather’s paternal side and one on his maternal side.
  • I was able to identify in this way about one third of my mother’s Rathfelder clusters.
  • I assume that the further one goes down on the clusters, the further out the matches are.

 

 

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More Frazer Clusters from Gladys

Gladys is a Frazer relative here:

Gladys’ great-grandfather Richard was the brother of my 2nd great-grandfather George Frazer. In my previous Blog, my thinking was that if I used Gladys for clusters, I would get better or older matches. Also these clusters would likely eliminate some of the McMaster Matches as my 2nd great-grandfather married a McMaster.

I chose as a person of interest Mabel for Gladys’ clusters:

Here is Cluster 3. This discovered my family even though they were not explixitly included in the inputs to the cluster:

Jonathan is my brother and the rest are my siblings, my niece, my nephew, my two children and myself. This suggests that of my siblings who have tested at Ancestry, Jonathan should have the most Frazer DNA and I should have the least.

Cluster 4 for Gladys

This cluster has just one more match than the pink cluster above, but my family are now out of the cluster:

I noticed that Zara was a new match. She is also the daughter of Susan:

I’ll assume that Susan knew who her mother and grandmother were. This is Susan’s maternal line from her Ancestry Tree:

It turns out I already had Susan:

I got a little confused. This is an older Richard Frazer Line. The 1830 Richard and the 1852 Richard must have been named for the 1700’s Richard.

I looked at the lower right cluster but could not see an easy connection to any of my identifiable ancestors.

Cluster 5 for Gladys

This looks like two major clusters with perhaps some clusters within the clusters.

I recognize Jane in the major 2nd cluster. Jane and Siddon descend from Richard Frazer born perhaps 1777. I also descend from that line but from Violet Frazer who married James Frazer. So that should be the two major clusters above. First Violet and then Archibald born 1804 – both children of Richard.

 

The last cluster had 60 matches. This expanded things far out:

This one gives me a bit of a headache.

Summary and Conclusions

  • Using Gladys and Mabel to cluster gives some more detail on the different Frazer Lines
  • However, because Gladys is a bit removed from me at 3rd cousin once removed, the results are more obscure than ideal.
  • Ancestry suggests using someone in the 2nd cousin range. I think that makes sense.

 

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Ancestry’s Expanded Clusters and Frazers

I would like to see what there is of the new expanded Clusters at Ancestry on my Frazer Line. Here are some choices to cluster with:

Mabel is not my closest match by DNA, but she is my closest Frazer relative. George Frazer married a McMaster, so some of them should show up.

Creating a Custom Cluster with Mabel

First, I chose Mabel as a person of interest. The I added a few more Frazer relatives good matches. This gave me 6 custom clusters:

Here is the first 7 match cluster:

Matthew, Mabel and Faye are on my ThruLines.

I see that John’s DNA is managed by Dawn. She has a tree and her father appears to be John:

John is already on my Frazer DNA Tree:

Rebecca is on my tree. She descends from the branch that returned to Ireland from Massachusetts.

Whitney is on my tree already. She descends from my great-grandfather’s brother Richard Frazer.

That leaves Stephen. According to my shared matches, Whitney is his niece. Here, I added in Stephen next to Lisa on my Frazer DNA Tree:

I also added Stephen to my Ancestry Tree.

I was able to place each person in that cluster, so that is good.

The next 8 person cluster adds one more Matthew:

Strangely, Matthew is in the cluster and not his mother Karen. That must be because he shares more DNA with me than his mother. That makes me want to add in Matthew on my Frazer DNA tree:

This was the branch that went back to Ireland.

Frazer Cluster 3

The previous cluster is on the bottom but a few people dropped out of it. The new people are on the top.

Gladys is easily identifiable:

Gladys brings us back a generation on the Frazer tree. Richard Frazer was one of my earliest finds by DNA. In other words, he was discovered first through a DNA match from one of his descendants and then connected by genealogy. It is clear that it will be more difficult to get all the relatives at this level of relationship.

Kathryn and Others in the Cluster

Kathryn has no tree, but it is clear from shared matches that she is also from the Richard Frazer Branch. I sent an email to see if she has any information on her tree.

I looked at all others and they were in the same group – descending from Richard Frazer. However, I could not figure out easily how they fit in easily. Here is what I have now on my Frazer DNA Tree from the Richard Branch:

Cluster 4 and 5

Cluster 4 is very similar to Cluster 3, so I’ll skip to Cluster 5:

The top three are on the McMaster side.

mtrent is on my McMaster DNA Tree already as son of Robert Trent:

Here is BV:

As far as the bottom right group in Cluster 5, I am not sure. Clif is related to Gladys, who descends from Richard Frazer, but there is another connection that I cannot identify.

Cluster 6

Cluster 6 just adds some more matches to the groups:

The DNA is likely messed up as Frazers married Frazers, McMasters married McMasters and Frazers married McMasters. Also, some of my Frazer ancestors do not have the spouses identified. That makes for some genealogial uncertainty.

Summary and Conclusions

  • It was interesting to see how my Frazer ancestors grouped together in clusters
  • Matches were either easy or difficult to identify
  • The easy matches were already in my Frazer or McMaster DNA trees
  • I feel like some of my other siblings or matches have better DNA connections to the Frazer family, so it may be best to use them in the future. For example, Gladys would be a good choice as she is a generation older than me on the chart and I can access her DNA results.