Avoiding "Endogamy Lite"

 

If there is any difficulty in comparing DNA matches from my mother-in-law's family, it is that the folks claiming a heritage in Perry County, Ohio, can often be related to each other in several ways. Far more closely connected than one would expect from pedigree collapse, they are not exactly poster children for endogamy, either. That's why I like to call this scenario a case of "endogamy lite"—only about half the calories, er, connections you'd expect in any endogamous population. And in this month's research case, I need to avoid those "endogamy lite" relationships like the plague.

The beauty of these tiny DNA matches I've recently discovered is that they are isolated to only one surname matching my mother-in-law's inter-related family lines. That name is Miller. With many of our other Perry County DNA matches, a closer look almost always reveals connections to several shared surnames, making it difficult for me to answer my research question for this month concerning Lydia Miller's roots. Those multiple surnames have been intertwined into this family for generations—but not, thankfully, in the case of these newly-discovered Miller DNA matches.

This opportunity gives me a chance to view Miller connections, isolated from the other intermarried lines. So far, I've found six such matches, and I'm working on confirming three more. Unfortunately, since these are all matches found on Ancestry.com, I have no way to extract the raw data and paint the chromosomes, unless I encounter six very willing strangers who are game to allow me to deeply explore their test results—something I'm not even going to attempt.

According to one Miller collaborator I've been working with—someone, by the way, who is related to my husband through multiple family lines, thanks to "endogamy lite"—there are several more Miller DNA connections to be found on the other testing services. Another task for me to do will be to explore what this collaborator has found at those other sites.

I suspect, however, that my husband's test yields more Miller connections than does my collaborator's test. Using Ancestry.com's ProTools, I checked for shared matches between the six Miller tests I've identified and my collaborator's test. There are no matches in common. Granted, this collaborator could have inherited totally different strands of Lydia's DNA than my husband has, yet another reason to continue comparing notes.

Looking at the trees of these six Miller matches found so far is informative. We'll explore a bit more of those connections next week.