Things You'd Otherwise Never Have Known

 

Walking through airport terminals brings with it a haunting sense that I am passing by family members whom I never knew. Perhaps most people would never give such a thought any consideration, but when you are immersed in genealogy—and even more so, genetic genealogy—you see as likely what others would dismiss as unlikely.

Even so, the nagging suspicion that I'm crossing paths with, say, a sixth cousin did not quite prepare me for the discovery that I might have just missed an encounter with a double sixth cousin. Such possibilities enter the realm of things you'd otherwise never have known, but today, I almost discovered the bearer of such an unlikely relationship.

Since I've been working this month on the line of my (formerly brick wall) third great-grandfather Thomas Rainey, discovering his parents' identities, and then his maternal grandfather's identity, I took that information to the ThruLines tool at AncestryDNA. Sure enough, there were several matches already assembled for my consideration regarding my fifth great-grandfather Thomas Firth. 

I selected one possible sixth cousin, and pulled up the readout proposing how we were connected. What was strange about that diagram was that the ancestors at the top of the list—Thomas Firth, followed by his daughter Rebecca—were not the only boxes entered in solid-white appearance. Skipping three dotted-line boxes for the subsequent generations not listed in my family tree, the last two boxes itemizing the generations preceding my DNA match were also solid white boxes, meaning I already had those people in my tree.

This DNA match had apparently already been confirmed in my tree, connected through another relationship in my family. Could this have been a case of some sort of double cousin link, only far more distant than the usual cousin of this sort? I had to look closer.

Yes, it is possible that, far back in our family's past, yet another person married someone from another branch in our tree. That's the same dynamic which brings us endogamy and pedigree collapse. No surprise here. I just didn't expect it on that side of my own family tree.

Of course, I had to look further into that assertion. After all, ThruLines suggestions are based on support from family trees. And family trees on genealogy websites are notorious for being copied from other family trees. Some of those trees contain errors. Where does that leave us?

While my DNA match's paternal grandmother's line did indeed line up with my own mother's line, this supposed second relationship would have come from the match's paternal grandfather's line. I started building that line up in my own tree, using documentation. At first, it seemed difficult to find any trace of documentation for that grandfather's line, partially because of a move from a different state, and partly in following someone with a series of misfortunes, such as remarriages and step-children.

In the end, I realized what had happened. It was the spouse of my related line who had married twice, with the child in question actually being a step-child for my family's direct line. Some family trees had mis-attributed the parents for this child, who then showed up as a direct relative instead of a step-relative. Ancestry.com went with the subscribers' trees; I chose to follow the paper trail.

I suppose at some point, with all these DNA tests showing us how we are all related, I might stumble upon someone who is doubly related to me, maybe in ways I would never suspect. Results from DNA tests can be surprising. But so can the people who build those trees.