The first news is so far I have found NO NPE in either line. What is an NPE? Non Parental Event.1 In other words, my paper records do agree with DNA. All lines have been confirmed to around the mid 1700s or as far as I have been able to go. I need to learn more about using DNA results to try to find our last few missing “recent” ancestors. One is the wife of John Ratliff (ca 1805-1847), my third great grandfather. I’m also not sure of his parents, but from DNA I know who his grandparents are. Also, I do not know for sure who the parents of our second great grandfather Alexander Anderson (1805-1884) is. We think the name is Archibald, but I cannot be sure of a suitable person in the records. The good news is I have a clue that might work out. We do know the ancestry of his wife.
The chart below is how ancestry.com displays something they call Thrulines, and is so far the most important way that I am using the DNA information. What they do is compare DNA matches with me to other people’s ancestry trees comparing them to my tree. In this case it works pretty well because Robert Davis’ ancestry is well known and that means most people’s trees are reasonably correct. I conclude from this that I am related to 5 children of Robert Davis. That does not prove the name of Robert Davis, but does provide confirmation that I am related to 4 other children who we believe are children of Robert Davis. I say this because sometimes we do know the names of the children, but not the parent’s name, usually in the case of missing or incorrect wife’s name. All I know is I am related to 78 other people who claim to descend from Robert Davis. But in this easy case, this is sufficient for my purposes, which is to confirm that Robert Davis is my ancestor.
I also use it in another way. A “brick wall” in genealogy is a dead end that you have spent a lot of time on. Alexander Anderson (1805-1884) is one of my brick walls. This explains a way to use DNA to try to find the parents of Alexander Anderson.
“If records were burned or are missing or were never created, you can break brick walls by first hypothesizing and then using DNA to confirm a relationship. Start by researching your brick-wall ancestor and identifying possible relatives. Then locate and test living descendants of both your brick-wall ancestor and the possible relatives of this ancestor. Compare the DNA of the descendants of the brick-wall ancestor with the DNA of the descendants of the proposed relatives. If the DNA matches at an expected rate, the relationship probably existed.”
I am doing this now with a potential parent of Alexander Anderson (1805-1884). First, I need to say that the quality of ancestry trees is, well, abysmal. Most people simply copy other people’s information without considering any proof or even concern of stupidities like they married after they died or a girl had a child at the age of 2. At this point I have studied all other “solutions” for Alexander Anderson’s father which I can find, which is basically one person, who is not his father and his assigned mother is not his mother. And we have no DNA matches with them… So it is difficult to use the thrulines method for situations where most people’s trees are wrong, or I have nothing for the ancestor I am searching for.
Nonetheless I am now using it to see if my latest idea could be true. The Anderson Bible seems to indicate that Alexander’s father was named Archibald and I had been looking for an Archibald Anderson in Virginia. I was looking at Alexander’s records the other day and noticed that in one census Alexander reported that he was born in Pennsylvania (in the later ones he reported he was born in Virginia). I did not pay attention to that when I started out because I did not know that so many Virginians had come from Pennsylvania (most Scotch-Irish, which apparently the Andersons were). In Pennsylvania I found a John Archibald Anderson (1750-1833). So I put him in hoping for DNA hits. So far I have 3 DNA matches which are said to be with half siblings with Alexander rather than full, but I still have hope that I might at least be close.
As of today, I have 37,639 DNA matches and my cousin has 79,110. The reason for the difference is interesting. I am half German and they arrived in America in the mid 1800s. Most of my matches are probably from mother, some of whose family has been here since the 1600s. But why does that matter where your ancestors were? Because apparently Germans do not like to take DNA tests. My cousin’s background is much the same on both sides, so he has twice as many DNA matches as I do.
In summary, this has been much more useful than I had thought it would be and am very happy to confirm my tree in so many places. In particular, Nancy McGee (born about 1836) brought with her as of now 36 Scotch-Irish ancestors into my tree. My evidence for her was slim (as explained in my blog post Finding Nancy) but it looked likely. Now it has been confirmed by DNA. For example, I have 147 DNA matches with her grandfather Benjamin Bolling (1732-1832).
There were not so many mysteries on the German side. There are pretty good records and Carol Brenner’s book for the Brenner side. The German records in the area the Klamms and Brenners came from are very good for birth, marriage, and death. But it’s useful for DNA confirmation. For example, I have 37 DNA matches on 3 children of my 4th great grandfather Johann Peter Groh (b 1754). In general they are verified, but sometimes only with one child and I prefer multiple children to have matches. The problem is, as I mentioned above, that many of the descendants would be in Germany and they do not do DNA tests. In fact, I’m reading that it may now be impossible for German residents to purchase at home DNA tests.
As of now, I am using my DNA and that of one cousin. It would be nice to have more relatives involved. It’s very easy. Contact me if you have questions about it. One thing you get from a DNA test is ethnicity (what countries your ancestors came from) which all of you might be interested in.
- NPE. In genetics, a non-paternity event (also known as misattributed paternity, not parent expected, or NPE) is the situation in which someone who is presumed to be an individual’s father is not in fact the biological father.
MPE. The term used now is MPE (Misattributed Parentage Experience). This can occur due to an undisclosed adoption, donor conceived child, or when the father of a child isn’t who he was assumed to be.