I use the Leeds Color Method to sort AncestryDNA matches into four categories. Those four should be the same as a person’s four grandparents. I have tested my father’s cousin at AncsestryDNA. Joyce shares two of her grandparents as my two great-grandparents. Those are Hartley and Snell. I would like to be able to separate her Hartley matches from the Snell matches. This is because I am stuck with my genealogy on the Hartley side around the year 1800 in Trawden, Lancashire, England.
Joyce’s Family Tree
In order to separate out Joyce’s matches into four bins, I need to know her ancestry.
Joyce’s four grandparents are Gurney, Rounseville, Hartley and Snell.
Sorting Joyce’s Matches Using Shared Matches
I will be able to sort Joyce’s matches using AncestryDNA’s Shared Matches. First, I need to find Joyce’s closest 2nd cousin match or further out for each grandparent. At the 2nd cousin level, Joyce should match a person on only one of her grandparents.
Joyce has a good match with Chuck on the Snell side:
Joyce and Chuck are 2nd cousins. Their common ancestors are Snell and Bradford. However, on Joyce’s side, the match through Joyce’s Snell grandmother. That means that other Shared matches between Joyce and Chuck would be through Joyce’s Snell line or further back on the Snell ancestors.
I then put this information into a spreadsheet:
My guess up front is that it will be difficult to find Hartley DNA on Joyce’s Hartley grandparent side.
Finding Gurney and Rounseville Matches
Finding Gurney and Rounseville matches will be more difficult as I am not as familiar with the genealogy. Plus many do not have trees. Plus, I need matches that are at 2nd cousin level or further out and that is difficult to determine without trees. One rough way to figure out these matches is to look for Joyce’s matches that don’t match me.
One match that doesn’t match me is Richard. However, I don’t know if he is closer to Joyce than a second cousin. Here is his tree:
I don’t see a Gurney or Rounseville, but it could be on the mother’s side. So for now, I will add Richard to Joyce’s spreadsheet and note that the match is on Joyce’s father’s side:
The next person that doesn’t match me is Susan. Susan is more difficult than Richard to interpret. She is apparently on Joyce’s Gurney side, but she doesn’t have a tree. More confusingly, she matches Beth who is a Hartley relative. But Susan and Joyce must match Beth on Beth’s non-Hartley side.
Here I didn’t put Susan into a grandparent category. I did note she is on Joyce’s father’s side and that she matches Richard.
Going Down Joyce’s DNA Matches at Ancestry
Joyce’s next match is Gary. However, he thinks he is related on the Hartley/Snell line. That means that he is closer to Joyce than a second cousin. I had these names out of order, so I rearranged them:
Next is Cynthia. She appears to be on the Gurney side. I note that Chuck should be on the Hartley side, so I corrected that:
I added a column to show that Cynthia has no posted family tree.
The next match is with Bird:
Bird is on the Hartley side, but I can’t tell how close the match is. P means that Bird has a private tree. I would have to message Bird to find out more.
A Second Snell Match
Charles is likely related to Chuck:
Joyce’s Last Two 2nd Cousin Matches by DNA
J has a tree, but it is incomplete. Erin’s tree is locked:
Joyce’s 3rd Cousins by DNA
AncestryDNA estimates that these next matches are 3rd cousins to Joyce by DNA. Even at this level of DNA matches, Joyce still has cousins that are in the range of 1st cousin twice removed. However, here is a match on Joyce’s Gurney side:
Fortunately, AM had a tree posted that matched with Joyce’s tree:
AM has shared matches with Cynthia and Erin, but I don’t know if Cynthia and Erin also have Rounseville ancestors.
The next match is with Jody. The interesting thing is that Jody matches Richard, Susan and Joseph. That is interesting as she doesn’t match Cynthia and Erin. That makes me think that this could be a Rounseville match.
Joyce’s Miller Double Match
Joyce matches Miller, but they have shared matches with Chuck and AM:
That means that Miller matches Joyce on their Snell and Gurney sides. One side must match more than the other, but I can’t tell which. This doesn’t really matter as I am looking for Hartley DNA.
The next match is Bessey. She matches Chuck, and many other of my 2nd cousins, so I can’t tell if the match is just on the Snell side or Snell and Hartley side. I sent a message to Bessey to see if we could figure this out. I have the same issue with Beth:
Hopefully, these will sort themselves out soon.
This is also a bit confusing. Mark shows clearly as a Gurney match, but doesn’t have a shared match with AM:
Because of this, I put Mark in a Gurney2 slot:
Next, JM was managed by the same person as AM and matches AM but not Mark. JM has a private tree for some reason. JM also matched Miller but not Mark.
Joyce and CL
CL seems to be popular on my list. Here is CL’s tree:
The tree is a bit different than the one I have as I have Lucy Chace marrying Jonathan Gurney. I also have Lucy as Franklin’s mother in my tree. At any rate, CL pulls Mark back into the fold as CL is related to AM, Mark and JM:
Joyce’s 50th Match: Jessica
Joyce has 50 matches per page and Jessica is the last on her page. Jessica’s tree connects her to Chuck’s tree and Joyce through Florence Taylor:
Florence’s grandfather was Isaiah Hatch Snell. I can draw out a tree like this:
That makes Joyce and Jessica 2nd cousins twice removed.
Out of 50 of Joyce’s top matches, we have eight people associated with one of Joyce’s grandparents. However, we don’t yet have matches for Hartley or Rounseville only grandparents.
Page 2 of Joyce’s DNA Matches
Salley is match number 51:
Salley is a 3rd cousin, once removed to Joyce on their Rounseville side. However, notice that Salley also has Chace ancestors.
Joyce’s 4th Cousins by DNA
Here I went down the matches as they are now falling into place:
Mark is matching in and out. JR matched CL but not AM and Miller, so I put JR in the Gurney side. At some point, the DNA relatives will not match all of each other. Also one may be related to a Gurney, for example and one may be related to a Gurney grandparent ancestor that is not related to Gurney. In that case, they will not match, but the match will be along the Gurney grandparent ancestral line for Joyce.
Here are some more for the chart:
I had a second match with Rounseville that didn’t match the first, so I added another color of blue. I had two that matched Joseph, and some of the other matches were common with Gurney, so I added Joseph to Gurney. This is fine as long as Joseph doesn’t match Salley or SB. Joseph does match Salley. So I’ll keep Ashley and Kingsley under Gurney and take Joseph off of Gurney. I also took Ashley off of Gurney as I saw no other obvious matches.
The First Hartley Match
The First Hartley Match along Joyce’s Hartley grandparent line is actually has a Howorth ancestor.
Unfortunately, Victoria’s ancestor is Edmund Howorth and mine is James Howorth. However, she has shared matches with someone with “Howerth” in their line and a person with a Howorth name. I have that Joyce’s third great-grandfather was James Howorth born in 1768.
Joyce’s Top 100 Matches
Here are Joyce’s top 100 matches:
I found only one identified Hartley match on Joyce’s Hartley Line. That one is in bright blue. Most of Joyce’s matches were on her Snell or Gurney Line.
What I Have Learned
- My goal in this exercise was to separate the Snell from the Hartley DNA matches. What I found was that there were very few Hartley matches to separate. I think the reason for this is that Robert Hartley (Jocye’s 2nd great-grandfather) born 1803 had two children: Greenwood and Ann. Greenwood had two children who lived to adulthood: James and Mary Ann. As a result there were not many descendants at this level who have tested for DNA.
- Slogging through Joyce’s matches, I got a sense of who was related to whom. The Snell and Gurney lines go back to colonial times. At a certain point there are crossovers in the lineages. That is why there some poeple who match on on the orange and green lines.
- The Gurney and Rounseville green and blue lines were split into two. That is probably due to the Gurney and Rounseville mothers (Chace and Evans). There would be people related to those lines that would not be related to the Gurney and Rounseville Lines.
- 13 up from the bottom, Joyce had a match with GH. This person appears to be from Australia. This match should also be on the Hartley side. GH has a cluster of ancestors from Lancashire. It may be worth trying to build out this tree to see if there is a connection with Trawden or Bacup. GH’s ancestor’s locations are in orange:
- A lot of DNA analysis is in the sorting. Joyce has over 1,000 matches by DNA at the 4th cousin or closer level. I went through about 100. There is still some work to be done.
- Joyce is listed at MyHeritage also. Her brother is at FTDNA. More matches may be found there also.
- Finding Hartley DNA is not the same as finding Hartleys. The one Hartley DNA match that I looked at had a Howorth ancestor. This family is two steps back in time from the Hartley Line.
- That means that about 2 out of 100 of Joyce’s matches are on her Hartley grandparent’s line. As Jocye has over 1,000 4th cousin or closer matches, that means that I could expect about 20 Hartley Line matches. They could take a while to find.
- If anyone else is ambitious, they can discover how their DNA matches sort out into their four grandparents’ lines.
Project Update
I did hear back from “Bessey” who I mention in the Blog. Looks like her name is actually Katherine:
My paternal great grandmother was Hattie Parker Snell Mendall, sister of Annie Snell Hartley.
This helps to better build out the Snell DNA tree:
Katherine is 2nd cousin once removed to Joyce and Chuck and my 3rd cousin. In my looking for Hartley DNA, I ended up sorting out some Snell DNA. As far as AncestryDNA matches go, any shared match between a Hartley and Katherine or a Hartley and Chuck or Jessica would be on the Snell side and not on the Hartley side.