From Dynasty to DNA

 

Now that I've sorted out most of the various namesake grandsons of Lyman Jackson—as well as the many other descendants of his ten sons and three daughters—it's time to see whether those DNA connections to my husband's fifth great-grandfather make sense. After all, he currently has seventy one Jackson matches. It's time to get busy.

Lately, I've been using the "Shared Matches" from Ancestry's ProTools collection, enabling me to blast through entire family lines in some cases. Of course, this includes the current culmination of a twelve-year-long project to build out my mother-in-law's family tree to include all the descendants of all her ancestors. By the time we get back to fifth great-grandparents, that can add up to a lot of descendants, indeed.

Having just worked on the line of descent from Lyman Jackson's seventh son, Abner, I was ready to see what matches ThruLines had already attributed to specific sons of the patriarch Lyman. Among those seventy one DNA matches, there are descendants from the lines of Jesse Dunham Jackson, whom I researched earlier this month, and Abner Jackson, whom we touched on yesterday. Of course, the majority of DNA matches—currently fifty five—come from our direct ancestor, Lyman's son John Jay.

Of the remaining Jackson siblings, I have yet to research two sons and one daughter for whom we have six DNA matches. My hope, though, is that this additional work building out the family tree to include all the collateral lines plus all their descendants will point out additional matches for whom Ancestry has yet to pin a shared ancestor. 

From that step, I then look at each match's shared matches, sorted in order of relationship from closest downward, to see how I can place those other unidentified matches within the Jackson tree. It's an ongoing process and, yes, time consuming, but it does help sort those DNA matches into informative connections. The more work done on this process, the easier it becomes to place newer DNA matches within this Jackson family constellation.