YOUR DNA WORKSHOP
Karen Evans helps a reader who is has some very sensible beginner queries
3 USEFUL DNA BEGINNER QUESTIONS
Reader Joanne C. got in touch with DNA adviser Karen Evans. She had a few questions that other people may find useful to read when starting on the DNA journey too
JOANNE: I have Ancestry DNA results for both my mum and my dad. I used my account for mum, but set up a new account for dad. Dad doesn't want to pay for a subscription. Can I upload the tree from my account to his and still get the matches without another subscription? If not what do you suggest?
KAREN: You are allowed to attach a tree to your DNA results without a subscription. Your Dad will still get matches with Thrulines and Common
Ancestor hints. See the chart (right) to see what you can and can’t do without a subscription.
You could also make yourself the manager of his results. On your Dad’s DNA homepage, click on the settings cog and scroll to find sharing preferences. Once there you/your dad can invite you to access his results and once you accept you will see his DNA test on your account. Your dad still owns the results but you would have as much access as you need.
JOANNE: My dad is in a very similar position to Mick, featured in FT January. His grandfather was informally adopted, but we do have his birth certificate and I have found his baptism record showing mother and father, but – after many years’ research – I feel the only hope is DNA matches. I am considering asking him to do a Y test, but it is more expense and think I ought to explore the results I have first.
KAREN: I would definitely get to grips with the Ancestry test first. Depending on matches you could find links to the named father. Even if there is no clear contender your matches may point to a particular family/families for this missing parental line. The Y-DNA could point to a particular surname but the answer may already be in your autosomal results.
JOANNE: The highest matches dad has are 185 cm but I suspect they are from his mother’s side, which are very easy to trace. Is it just trial and error, checking people’s trees and allocating to the relevant parent?
KAREN: If you attach a tree to your Dad’s results you may get hints which allow you to assign certain matches to a particular line (though these need to be verified). Once you begin clustering your matches you will have groups which don’t seem to ‘fit’ into your proven tree. Then, yes, it’s a case of looking to find how those matches link together by finding common ancestors within the group – that’s the hard but fun bit!
USING DNA TO TRACE MY ILLEGITIMATE GRANDPARENTS’ PARENTS
One of the main reasons for FT reader Steve Ecclestone to take a DNA test was to explore the illegitimacy within his family tree. This illegitimacy has affected two families in particular: that of his paternal grandmother (Alice Maud Roots) and that of his maternal grandfather (Arthur Walpole Barney).
STEVE WRITES:
Document 1 is the birth certificate of my grandmother Alice Maud Roots born in 1893 to a 19-year oldChristiana Beatrice Roots. Christiana had a further two illegitimate children before marrying Benjamin Hunton in 1899. Given Benjamin acknowledges that all of the children are his in the 1901 Census I have built my tree assuming he was the father of Alice.
However, since taking the DNA test I have had matches within the legitimate areas of my tree but no match to any Hunton or associated family so I am beginning to question whether this is biologically true.
Document 2 and Document 3 are the birth certificates of Alice’s mother and grandmother and neither show a father. How might DNA help to trace the potential missing fathers as well as tracking down the forebears of Mary Ann senior who is my biggest brick wall to date as I have ruled out all potential candidates within Norfolk.
Thus the Roots family has three successive generations without a father.
Document 4 is the birth certificate of my grandfather Arthur Walpole Barney born in 1897 to an 18-year-old Mary Ann Barney again there is no father shown. Given his naming I have always assumed the missing father to be an Arthur Walpole but have never been able to locate a likely candidate. As can be seen from Document 5 his grandfather (who was neither registered for his birth nor baptised at any church), great-grandmother and great-great-grandmother (probably, is my current suspicion) were also illegitimate.
Thus the Barney family have four out of five generations without a father with only Arthur Walpole’s grandfather John Barney having married his partner prior to birth.
As a consequence of having two of my four grandparents illegitimate I have a seriously depleted tree which I am especially anxious to fill out and had hoped that DNA would help
me do so. I much admit to being ignorant of how one might make use of the toolset within Ancestry DNA and similar sites to find the sources of missing fathers and would love to know more. As each missing great-grandfather contributed 12.5% or thereabouts to my DNA, that’s a massive hole in knowing who and where I came from.
KAREN ANSWERS:
Steve has certainly got his work cut out! Steve gave me access to his Ancestry results and we began by looking at how the matches clustered. He had attached his proven tree to his DNA results so there were some ancestor hints to give some potential leads.
What did Steve’s results show?
At the time of writing Steve had 185 4th cousins or closer (one in the 2nd cousin range and eight in the 3rd cousin range). It quickly became clear that six of his top nine matches were linked to his father’s paternal Jessop-ecclestone/lucas line which was already clearly established through paper research. This group made a cluster of thirty-one matches, some identifiable through common ancestor hints, others via extending their existing trees to find the MRCA (Most Recent Common Ancestor).
Looking at the highest nonEcclestone match
Steve’s highest non-ecclestone match was ‘Chris’ at 171 cms with an attached tree and an ancestor hint indicating a link to the Barney family. As Steve mentioned, Arthur Walpole Barney was born illegitimately to Mary Ann Barney; Chris is related via a later child of Mary Ann when she subsequently married. According to the tree Chris’s parent was a halfsibling to Arthur and the DNA reflected that. Ancestry gave Mary Ann’s husband as a potential ancestor, again based on the tree but there was no evidence that he was Arthur’s father. There were only three shared matches between Steve and Chris which gave us no further leads.
Steve meanwhile found an Arthur Walpole who lived less than half a mile from Mary Ann but dies aged 21
in June 1897 – could this be Arthur Walpole Barney’s father? Steve drew up a tree for this Arthur Walpole and we looked for possible DNA matches but at the time of writing no link had been found.
Looking at the next highest match not yet in a cluster
‘Nat Hatton’ was the next highest match who was not yet in a cluster. Nat shares 121cms with Steve but did not have a tree. There were seven shared matches – again no hints on how they might be connected to Steve’s known tree. I created a yellow dot ‘Group A’ and added these matches to it. Although Nat was a high match none of the others were above 29 cms and none of their attached trees showed any places or names in common. I sent Nat a message but also decided to do some sleuthing. I had a first and surname and, in her profile, she gave her town of residence so I looked at the electoral registers on Ancestry and Findmypast. There were two women of that name, both seemingly married. I searched the names of the husbands with just her first name and it came up with two ‘Nats’ with their possible maiden names. One of these Nat’s was born in Norfolk (where many of Steve’s ancestors are from) and I found her mother’s maiden name was Hunton. Now that rang a bell!
I looked for a Hunton marrying Nat’s maiden name and found an Edith Hunton born 1916, Edith’s mother’s maiden name was Roots. This tied in with Steve’s information of the marriage between Christina Roots marrying Benjamin Hunton. Steve confirmed Edith Hunton was their daughter and therefore Nat Hatton was his first cousin once removed. Were Alice Roots and Edith Hunton full or half-siblings? Using the relationship calculator on Ancestry it seemed the relationship was much more likely to be half. Steve was disappointed, although he had partly expected that Benjamin Hunton wasn’t Alice’s father. We do know that, within this group, lurk the names of the ‘missing’ fathers but with no matches above 29 cms the shared relationship could be many generations away.
Looking at the last 3rd cousin not yet in a cluster
The last unclustered 3rd cousin range match was ‘Jim’ who shares 97cms with Steve. I was able to create a partial quick and dirty tree for Jim though I cannot crack his maternal grandfather’s line. This is very frustrating!
There are four shared matches in this cluster, to which I assigned an orange dot to and called Group B. A little like Group A, all the others in the cluster were not high matches (they ranged from 35cms to 21cms) so was there anything I could glean from the group? The two lowest matches did have rather nice trees and they were both descended from a Henry Morley (born c1813 Lakenheath, Suffolk) and Elizabeth Barnard (born c1818 Bunwell, Norfolk) via two of their daughters. The Morley name rang a bell with the tree I’d created for Jim. Looking back I saw one of his 5th greatgrandmothers was a Eliza Morley born c1803 Lakenheath. Using baptism documents Steve established that Eliza and Henry are siblings born to William Morley and his wife Sarah Dowling. Three of the five matches in this group are therefore descended from this couple. Based on the DNA it would appear Steve could be descended from Eliza’s line but there are no matches to extend this idea further.
Uploading DNA to Myheritage
Steve uploaded his DNA to Myheritage. His top match ‘Col’, who shares 97cms and has a tree showing his parents. I built the tree back using traditional research methods and
found the family had several links to Norfolk. Back to Ancestrydna and I began looking at some of the other clusters which I’d identified.
Group C (a green dot) was a cluster of six matches, the highest only 50cms. Fortunately this match had a tree and I immediately noticed a link between Col’s quick and dirty tree and this one. Both matches were descended from James Keys Boast (born 1807 Norwich) and his wife Susannah Fish (born 1807 Sherrington, Norfolk). It would seem that Steve is descended from this couple or either the Boast or Fish line. Could I find any DNA matches which established any further link to either of those families? Unfortunately not, although two of the cluster came from the same area there was no clear links.
Looking at the last clear group cluster
Our last clear group cluster was nine matches headed by Terry at 38cms. Although this looked an unlikely group we were very lucky in that Terry, when messaged, quickly replied and was keen to help. He was able to say that he and two other matches were linked to the Rutterford family in Lakenheath, unlocking his private tree and explaining how the matches were related (even going so far as to screenshot his shared DNA amounts within the group.) This was so helpful as it quickly established a potential family line for Steve to explore. We know, based on the DNA, that Terry is no closer than a 3rd cousin and possibly further than that but future matches within that group could give clearer focus. It was also interesting to note the Lakenheath connection in this group too.
Next steps
Steve should continue to look for links between within the clusters, especially the higher ones when/if more DNA matches appear. This can be achieved through the creation of quick and dirty trees, drawing on Steve’s experience with traditional research methods.
Now Steve has identified the MRCA (most Recent Common Ancestor) in some of his clusters he now needs to ‘marry off ’ potential ancestors and look for DNA matches to their spouses. For example, in the group containing Henry Morley, Steve could examine Eliza Morley’s children. Eliza married an Isaac Carriage/ Kerridge and ‘Jim’ is descended from that line via their son George. Are there any DNA matches to George’s wife Margaret Graver’s family? If there were then it could be Steve was descended from a child of that couple. What about George’s children? Who did they marry? Are there any DNA matches to these spouses? This is not an easy task and depends on the quality and quantity of matches.
Steve has no other close family members who are able to take a DNA test. To increase his matches Steve, after reading their terms and conditions, could upload his DNA to other sites such as Familytreedna, Livingdna and Gedmatch. They all allow uploads from other sites and have ever growing databases. He might also wish to invest in a test with 23andme. More matches could increase his evidence towards potential leads or show he is on the wrong path and to think again.
Summary
Steve now has the beginnings of leads into his potential ‘missing’ ancestors with links to the Morley, Boast/ Fish and Rutterford families. He was disappointed we could get no closer but realistic in his expectations that it would be difficult to pin down any potential father based on the relatively few matches in the 4th-6th cousin range and with so few high matches. He is an experienced researcher with an excellent knowledge of traditional research methods, if anyone can track down those missing ancestors, Steve can.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Karen Evans is a former primary school teacher who has been tracing her family history since 1983. DNA testing is her current passion but in her spare time Karen loves dressing and dancing in the Regency period.