Thru Lines Missing

I'm in love with how ThruLines is helping me learn more about my DNA matches. I wanted to show my husband how helpful this tool is.

Unfortunately, when I went to his DNA test to look at his ThruLines, the screen indated he didn't have any.

ThruLines Find

Have you experimented with Ancestry ThruLines yet? If not, you have to check it out!

As I posted earlier, ThruLines suggested that Matilda Caroline Stoner was a granddaughter of James and Sally (Smith Duggins) Crawford.

Based on the family tree suggested by ThruLines, I was able to research the family of Matilda Caroline Stoner and William Harrison Fields. Thru that research I was able to follow descendants to my suggested DNA matches.

DNA Thru Lines Potential Breakthroughs

Did you hear all about it yesterday? Both Ancestry and My Heritage announced new DNA tools. That combined with Diahan Southard's 'Connecting Your DNA Matches' presentation that was live streamed by RootsTech made for a BIG day in my DNA world.

In Diahan's session, she discussed using Blaine Bettinger's Shared Centimorgan Project to help verify relationships suggested by DNA. Even though I was aware of and had contributed to Blaine's project, I had never used the results to analyze my cousin matches. During her presentation, Diahan talked about using a spreadsheet to keep track of this data. 

Thus, I tried to create my own spreadsheet based on Diahan's presentation. So far, I haven't found any 'surprises' in the amount of shared DNA. However, I am finding an advantage to this type of spreadsheet for DNA matches. This type of spreadsheet will help me keep track of how I am related to my matches. Below is an image from my new spreadsheet. I have blacked out the identifying information for my matches.

DNA Heritage and Challenge

During a recent visit with some old friends, the discussion turned to genealogy and DNA. Expecting an answer regarding ethnicity, they asked where my family comes from.  My immediate response was KENTUCKY.

Perhaps this quick answer was due to my recent THOMPSON research in Ohio County, Kentucky. The more likely reason is that a lot of ancestral lines seem to go thru Kentucky. (or New York). My brother's migration map from his Ancestry DNA test illustrates our heritage.

DNA Puzzle - Crawford Line

When I spit in a test tube for my first DNA test, I had high hopes of proving a relationship to another Crawford line and ultimately breaking through our brick wall in early Kentucky. Those hopes were greatly diminished when I wasn't a match to a known descendant of the James and Martha (Knight) Crawford line.

However, I had matches to descendants of William N. Crawford of Washington and Isaac and Nancy (Miller) Crawford of Kentucky. Those matches have revived hopes of figuring out how my Crawford line fits into the greater Crawford genealogy.

Since I have those matches 'painted' on DNA painter, I decided to experiment to see how they overlapped with DNA from my 2nd cousins.

Crawford Puzzle - One Piece at a Time

My Crawford lineage has always been like putting together a jigsaw puzzle -- trying to figure out how hundreds of pieces fit together. Many years ago, I wrote about dissecting these pieces in order to identify my line. At the time, I identified four James Crawford families that were in the same region of Kentucky prior to 1800.

• Rev. James Crawford (1752-1803) who married Rebecca McPheeters


• James Crawford who married Rebecca Anderson


• James Crawford (1772-1854) who married Sally Duggins in 1799 in Garrard County, KY


• James Crawford (1770-1833) who married Martha Knight in 1793 in Lincoln County, KY

More Circles, Please

For some, DNA is all about their ethnicity. For me, it is all about finding actual cousins. I'm not just looking for that 7 cM of common DNA but for much longer pieces -- my cousins.

Recently, I discovered that a little work on my part could improve my results on AncestryDNA. I found if I quit ignoring those green leaves (called 'shaky leaves' by some) and actually worked to confirm the hints, the number of 'shared matches' [shared ancestor hints] would increase.

When I posted about this on the 11th, my DNA circles hadn't really changed. However, I now have 16 circles when I had only been seeing about six.

Unexcpected DNA Finding

Last week, I watched the "Watch Geoff Live: DNA" webinar on Legacy Family TreeWebinars. While watching, I followed along by looking at my autosomal DNA results on Ancestry. I had my DNA tested last summer and had studied some of the results but hadn't found the help with 'brick walls' that I had hoped for.

One of the brick walls I've been working on is my James Crawford line. My James Crawford died in Preble County Ohio in 1854. He married Sally Duggins in Garrard County Kentucky in 1799. Sally had previously been married to Alexander Duggins by whom she had two sons: William and Henry. Henry Duggins was married to Jane Sellers, daughter of Nathan Sellers. Nathan A. Sellers was a neighbor of my James Crawford and died in Preble County Ohio in 1824. In early Preble County Ohio, there was a second James Crawford who owned land adjoining my James Crawford. This James Crawford married Martha Knight in 1793 in Lincoln County Kentucky. It is believed that two of the sisters of this James Crawford married brothers to Nathan A. Sellers. Thus, the two Crawfords, the Sellers and the Duggins were all neighbors in Preble County Ohio and loosely related by marriages. However, no proof has been found of any relationship between the two James Crawfords.

As I was watching and following along, I somehow searched my DNA results for the Sellers surname. SURPRISINGLY, I found matches on Nathan Sellers of Pennsylvania! I've found at least two others (enough for a circle of 3) but the generations don't quite match up for Ancestry to create a circle (yet). Thus, I've started trying to document a circle.

A known descendant of James and Martha has his DNA on Gedmatch (but not on Ancestry). When we have compared our two sets of DNA, it said there were 'No Shared DNA segments found'. Thus, we assumed we either weren't related or that it was far enough back that the DNA didn't help.

With my new SELLERS discovery, I decided to re-look at Gedmatch. This time, I had it show the chromosomes. We still didn't have matches on 'centromeres'. However, the chromosomes weren't all red. Thus, I had to study the GedMatch key.

According to the key, the more lime green, the more matches on base pairs (A-T and C-G). When I looked at the chromosome comparison with the descendant of the other James Crawford, I found that we had a lot of yellow and green on chromosomes 21 and 22.

 When I did the same comparison between the descendant of James and Martha Crawford and a descendant of Nathan A. Sellers, there was even more yellow and green on these two chromosomes.

Granted, all results still say 'No shared DNA segments'. However, this is comparing autosomal DNA and not yDNA. I'm also looking at possible relationships at least six generations back. This yellow and green and the fact that SELLERS turns up as a surname match on Ancestry is enough to cause me to re-look at the research I have already done and use the SELLERS research to learn more about my CRAWFORD lineage.