Counting Carter Connections

 

How far back can a simple autosomal DNA test go? When we use the more powerful tests—Y-DNA or mtDNA—we can trace back generations through two hundred years or more, but with limitations. Those tests limit our inquiries to the patrilineal—father's father's father line—or the similar concept for the matriline, or mother's line, only.

What if I want to learn more about my fifth great-grandfather? For that line leading to John Carter, we need to do far more zigging and zagging than we'd see in either the matriline or patriline. To be precise, after following my matriline to my great-grandmother, we'd then zag to her father, then his mother, then jump to her maternal grandfather to reach John Carter, my fifth great-grandfather. But at least at that point, the far more common autosomal DNA test can still reach. But barely.

What I realized yesterday was that, incredibly, I have at least sixty five DNA matches at one company where I tested whose record also reaches back to that same John Carter. That means I have at least sixty five other people related to John Carter who would probably be my sixth cousin. That's a stretch.

To check that out more closely, I had to look at the particulars. Here's what I found.

On the surface, things seem to be in order. Remember, John Carter had several children by two different wives, with my line descending from the second wife, Hannah Chew. Using the ThruLines tool at Ancestry.com, which organizes likely matches into family groups by children of this ancestor, it looks like I have matches descending from seven of John Carter's children. 

That's not surprising, since we've already seen there were at least fourteen children to yield possible matches. But when I look closer, I begin to see there might be problems. For instance, of the seven lines, I spotted one name which doesn't line up with the genealogies I've found so far. Granted, at this point, I'm working from published genealogies, and although the one I favor seems to be the result of careful research, there could be mistakes—or omissions. I still need to do my own research; I'm just using this as a thumbnail sketch.

The lines ThruLines provided for John Carter's children were William, Margaret, and Sarah from his first wife, and Mary Beverley, Judith, and, of course, my line from Margaret Chew Carter for John's second wife. There was one more listed in ThruLines, though, that has me stumped: a line for someone named Bailey Carter, a name for which I can find no report.

Taking a closer look at who in my DNA matches descended from this unknown person, I realize there is only one person listed in this ThruLines list. While that match connects with me based on one segment of twenty one centiMorgans, looking at the proposed path of descent reveals some problems. Bailey, for instance, was said to have been born in 1743, but the next generation, a woman named Nancy, had a birth year of 1750. 

I don't think so.

Granted, I could take the time to build that tree for myself. A project like that might reveal another path to our relationship, maybe not even linked to the Carter line. Or I could discover just where Bailey fit into the Carter family constellation and make the appropriate corrections in my own tree.

Or I could just take it as a mistaken identity—and not a very close match at that.

There are others in the collection of Carter matches still to look at, but they seem to fall within two camps. One group is comprised of matches who connect with me at very low levels, hovering around ten centiMorgans or less. The other group shows me that I definitely need to get busy on my own research into the descendants of the John Carter line. We'll need to look more closely at this again.