Off the Shelf: One in Six Million

 

Heading to a conference in Minnesota last week, I thought I'd grab a book to read on the flight. This was a title I'd long awaited the chance to read: Amy Fish's One in Six Million. 

I thought the flight would give me plenty of time to complete the brief volume—after all, its length is only 210 pages, including notes, acknowledgments, and even a book club reader's guide. That was not so, due to unexpected turbulence, a reason which has also kept me from reading in cars and trains. (I'll spare you the details.)

Thus, putting the book's engrossing story on hold, I attended an educator's conference which included a tour of a local synagogue, perhaps as an ethnic-awareness exercise, but which served as a timely enrichment of my reading experience as well. 

You see, encountering a story like One in Six Million is not merely an exercise in reading one page after another. Though the pages do turn—and sometimes, you can't help but read just one more—the story unfolds much like a Middle Eastern or Jewish explanation might. You simply must understand the background. And the author is more than happy to provide that enrichment.

Simply put, the book recounts the predicament of a woman who didn't even know who she was. Wrapped in a woolen blanket and set to the side of the road as an eight month old infant, her only identifiers were a first name and date—presumably of her birth—written on a note pinned to her only protection from the elements. How she got there or why can only be presumed by the events surrounding the town near the street where she was found: a village in Nazi-occupied Poland in 1942.

The baby, once abandoned, was eventually found and rescued, of course. Else her tale would have been a brief one. Instead, the story recounts how many people and networks came together over time to help one woman discover who she really was, and who her family had been. While the author pulls in many facets of the process and its international cast of volunteers, this requires understanding of several aspects, including the early use of technology to reunite Holocaust survivors, efforts to build a genealogical database now freely available to all, the introduction of DNA testing for family history, and the volunteers from around the world who each played a tiny part in reaching the conclusion, decades afterwards, of the infant's true identity. 

From my viewpoint—yes, I did complete the book on my return flight—this is a book not merely read, but absorbed. Perhaps it's my genealogical perspective—I've personally met some of the DNA players mentioned in the book—but I found One in Six Million to be a recounting which, after being completed, still remains on my mind. 

It's the Little Things that Count

 

When using DNA to connect with matches who share second great-grandparents, those distant cousins share very little genetic material in common. But when the goal is to push beyond the brick wall ancestors just one more generation, it's the little things that count. As I mentioned yesterday, third cousins can share under two hundred centiMorgans—and the number can slide far lower than that. It's that little amount that is consuming my research time lately.

Anyone who might be related to Anna Flanagan through, say, an as yet unknown sibling, would share a very small amount of genetic material with her direct descendants, indeed. With that in mind, I conducted yet another hunt to see whether I could find a potential match among the many who share as low as ten, twenty, or thirty centiMorgans with my husband.

I used the approach of creating a custom cluster on Ancestry.com, naming one specific match as my key target. Keep in mind that, though this match has the Flanagan name in her tree, I don't yet know for sure that she is related to the same Flanagan line in County Limerick, though our email discussions over the past few years have led me to believe this could be a possibility.

I created the custom cluster to have, at its lowest amount, a centiMorgan count far smaller than the usual clusters offered at Ancestry. The result of my request provided forty one matches. Oddly enough, two of that group matched my husband on his maternal side, rather than the expected paternal side. I set those two results aside and did not consider them, though I have seen some matches in the past in which the wrong side of the family had been attributed as the nexus. I also know that, reaching back that many generations among American descendants can sometimes produce other lines in which someone from the paternal side coincidentally also ended up marrying someone from my husband's maternal side.

From that point, I went one by one through the remaining thirty nine matches produced by this custom cluster request. Where I could determine through viewing each candidate's "shared matches" option which branch of my father-in-law's Irish roots might claim each candidate, I eliminated those from other branches from my search.

In the end, I was left with...nothing. None of that grouping seemed to indicate roots either linked to Flanagans or descended from the Ballyagran area of County Limerick. There was, however, a surprise: a few matches who had the surname Lee in their roots. Lee, I had found out from prior years' experience, was the married name of a niece of Anna Flanagan who had also emigrated from Ireland to the Chicago area of the United States.

While none of these Lee matches were the same as the Lee family I had researched, they also were Irish immigrants who hailed from the Chicago area, the same area where Anna Flanagan had settled, prompting me to revisit that Lee connection I had found from so long ago. We'll take a look at that tomorrow, especially because there is one issue nagging at the back of my brain: there don't seem to be any DNA matches pointing to my husband's Flanagan-Lee side of the family.

What we Don't Have in Common

 

Perhaps in wrestling with a research problem, we struggle so much that we end up on the far side of reasonable conclusions. Perhaps, after comparing and contrasting DNA matches over and over today, I've reached that far end. But the thought this day left me with might have some validity, despite the mental exhaustion. I'm wondering whether it might be far more productive for me to partner with Flanagan cousins whose matches have nothing in common with my family, as far as DNA goes. What we don't have in common may provide the answer we seek.

I'm searching for DNA matches who share genetic material with my husband and a common heritage in County Limerick with his Flanagan ancestors. Other than close relatives descended from the very same second great-grandmother as my husband claims—Anna Flanagan—I've found very little to work with. If I search for DNA matches whose family tree includes Flanagan surnames, I end up with matches whose ancestors hailed from County Cork, or even County Mayo, not County Limerick.

Trying to find DNA matches with another descendant of a second great-grandparent would mean finding a third cousin, at the closest. At that point, it is quite possible that two such cousins would share absolutely no genetic material in common, despite both being descended from the same ancestral couple. In other words, the shared centiMorgans might amount to an absolute zero.

If what I am actually trying to accomplish is to push back even beyond that second great-grandmother, it would mean finding descendants of a third great-grandparent, thus looking for fourth cousins. At that level, it would be even less likely to find someone who shares the same Flanagan genetic signature as my husband.

In other words, the more distant the relationship, the less likely that two such cousins would share any genetic material at all. 

But what genetic Flanagan signature my husband might not share with his own DNA matches could very well be the exact segment that a Flanagan cousin might share with a different family member. In other words, rather than reading the ProTools results for cousins who share DNA with my husband's test and a match in common, I need to find the matches of our matches who share different Flanagan DNA segments with their own matches—not in common with my test, but in common with other Flanagan cousins.

While that might sound reasonable in theory, in practice, it would take cooperation between cousins who are willing to share their data. Perhaps a letter writing campaign might convince candidates to join up to solve this Flanagan mystery. On the other hand, at a third cousin level, the greatest amount of genetic material any one match set could share would be 234 centiMorgans—a small amount, indeed, but also an amount which shows us how much variability there is between what one third cousin could inherit versus another third cousin descended from the same second great-grandmother.

In other words, I'm looking for someone with DNA in common with my husband's Flanagan ancestor who has other Flanagan matches who do not share the Flanagan segments that match shares with my husband. Perhaps there's someone out there who inherited all the Flanagan genes that my husband did not. I hope that person took a DNA test and posted the results, along with a complete family tree. At least, I can dream.

Trying This, That, the Other

Some days, the research path leads in circles. Yesterday was one of those days. With plans to review Flanagan results at four of the DNA companies where my husband has tested, I ended up trying a little bit of this, a smattering of that, and some more of the other, and came up with...nothing. If I found Flanagan matches, they lived elsewhere. If I found County Limerick connections, they didn't merge with the Flanagan family. It was a zero sum day.

I tried every data manipulation combination I could think of, checking for matches in common with my husband and either of two sisters who had tested, plus matches shared with some of their children. Nothing led to the hoped-for connections.

However, spending hours being thorough must have put me in the mood to keep checking through other Flanagan files. I not only have made it a habit to check back through the fifteen years' history of this blog, but whenever I received a useful comment on a post, or an actual email, I saved it for future reference. In addition, as I found pertinent links for specific family lines, I'd save them in a set of electronic file folders delineated by surname. My Flanagan e-file has several gems saved over the years, some of which I had nearly forgotten about. It was good to review all those notes—some of which contained details I need to make sure to add to the right places in our family tree.

While the pursuit of DNA leads didn't, um, lead anywhere, it occurred to me to try a slightly different approach. While comparing matches linked to siblings can produce some insights—in the Flanagan case here, unfortunately, it didn't—it occurred to me that widening the circle might yield a more useful set of details. Over the years, I've kept in touch with distant cousins who also research their family lines. We've compared notes from time to time. Now might be just the right time to reach out and see whether those cousins have Flanagan matches where my husband's test just doesn't have the genetic details that would point to that side of his family. It's certainly worth the try.

Our Siblings' Side of the Family Story

 

One problem with using DNA for family history research is that we find silver bullet strategies often come crashing down. We put so much hope into such tests, but it turns out that DNA match lists may not contain the magic potion we've assumed would bring down those impenetrable ancestral brick walls.

There is a way around such disappointments, as I've found. It's in using DNA testing in combination with a lot of hard research work and testing strategies that can produce more useful results. One key is to test siblings. Where one sibling's DNA results may match the target test subject on certain chromosome segments, the other sibling may yield far different results, yielding another side of the family story. Perhaps this is the cause behind the red-headed step-child accusation, where one of several siblings doesn't seem to have the same appearance as the rest of the family, and yet is, indeed, a child of the same parents. Sometimes a hidden characteristic from a grandparent makes itself known in only one grandchild—and that can be the family quirk that leads us to a hidden ancestral story.

In my husband's case—as he is the proxy for my father-in-law's genetic profile—he has two sisters who were willing to test their DNA to help me with a class project I had, years ago, for a workshop taught by Blaine Bettinger at a genealogy conference. I'll call them Sister #1 and Sister #2. As I worked through the genetic differences that could be spotted between the three siblings, it was clear that Sister #2 had matches not shared by the other two subjects. Her matches, some of them quite distant relationships, all descended from her family's ancestors from County Tipperary in Ireland. I was able to confirm connections as distant as fifth cousin from specific matches which she did not share with her two siblings.

On the other hand, Sister #1 had matches from the more southern counties in Ireland. At the time when I had first realized this, I was working on connecting DNA matches from Sister #2 to the family's Tully and Flannery roots in County Tipperary and, while overjoyed to have discovered such a handy connection there, I gave little thought to the value of the other sister's DNA connections.

Now, as it turns out, Sister #1 may have the key to unlock at least some of the doors leading to Flanagan and Malloy answers from County Limerick. Because both siblings had tested at Family Tree DNA, rather than at the more popular Ancestry.com, this will mean working with a smaller universe of results, but it will also mean working with a company which, over the years, has focused on marketing directly to Irish residents at annual genetic genealogy conferences of the prior decade.

Hopefully, at least some of those many Irish DNA-testing subjects will have a useful match with Sister #1. The most likely approach will be to seek matches who are not "in common with" my husband's results at Family Tree DNA. However, I already did spot one Flanagan match from my husband's own results who leads back to a possible relative of Anna Flanagan.

Back at Ancestry.com, their ThruLines results show only seven matches connected to Anna Flanagan. All of those, unfortunately, are close cousins whom we already know. No secrets unlocked there. And though I had already prompted the system to find a father, simply labeled by his surname "Flanagan," the ThruLines system hasn't yet uncovered any more distant cousins, despite my father-in-law's tree including Flanagan descendant Johanna Flanagan Lee and her descendants down to the level of third great-grandchildren.

In addition, there are test results at MyHeritage and 23andMe, though these are only for my husband's results, not his siblings, so there is no way to compare or contrast those results, only to find matches with the rather common surname Flanagan.

Still, having DNA test results does provide one additional way to chip away at that Flanagan brick wall story back in County Limerick. Now that we're finally at the beginning of August—the official start of researching Anna Flanagan, number eight of my Twelve Most Wanted for 2026—perhaps these updated DNA matches, especially from Sister #1, will provide some answers about Anna Flanagan's roots in County Limerick.

Summer Slowdown

 

I have often wondered whether the reasons some genealogical societies always chose to "go dark" for the summer might now be outdated. After all, with a major demographic in such organizations weighted heavily towards those who are now retired, who needs summer for a vacation? Extended travel can be done at any time.

This past week, I had my own personal proof that summer travel is still a reality: I spent the week in Minnesota. As you can guess, I gave very little thought to family history research. In fact, with today marking my biweekly review of progress, the numbers confirmed that summer slowdown for me.

Granted, I had an additional excuse for a less than stellar biweekly report: looking for clues about brick wall ancestors from Ireland can bring any search to a screeching halt. To package the slowdown entirely under that umbrella, though, would not be a fair representation. I was busy doing what people often do in the summertime.

With that in mind, I did add fifty one more names to my father-in-law's tree, which now includes 44,259 ancestral relatives. I managed to add two more to my own tree, to boot, though that tree is trailing at 41,959 documented names. That surprise addition on my tree was thanks to the discovery that twelve more DNA matches were added to my side of the family, which rounded out one branch by an additional generation.

DNA matches on my father-in-law's side have not increased by quite so much. For this biweekly span, there were only two new matches; the previous two weeks yielded zero. Perhaps not as many are testing from the Irish roots side of the equation, leaving me without answers where I need them the most.

Whether the DNA slowdown can also be attributed to a summer slowdown, I can't really say. Still, with the start of a new week, I'll be taking a long look at whatever can be gleaned from those matches I've already spotted, to see whether any new additions will help point me in the right direction for my Flanagan question, back in County Limerick.

With a Little Help From Family

 

An emailed note I recently received reminded me of another resource to use as I struggle to piece together Anna Flanagan's story. While my father-in-law, Anna's descendant, has long since passed away, I not only have his son's DNA test at Ancestry.com to rely on for potential Flanagan matches, but two additional children had also tested, using another of the four testing companies which we had used for my husband's test. With a little help from family members' DNA results—not to mention, a review of results at the other companies we had utilized—perhaps it will be easier to zero in on the closest Flanagan connections.

One thing I had noticed by testing three siblings is the variety of DNA matches linked to only one of the siblings. The matches' ancestors seemed to cluster around different geographic regions of Ireland. One test matched many of the lines from County Kerry and County Limerick, while the other sibling's matches pointed farther north to County Tipperary.

Admittedly, this was an effect I had noticed for more distant cousin matches—say, around third cousins—but that is exactly what is needed for this question about Anna Flanagan. Anna would be the second great-grandmother for all three of the siblings who tested, so any same-generation matches would register at about the third cousin level.

Since each sibling seemed to have a different set of matches at that distant relationship level, it may help me zero in on the one test which seemed more likely to match the Flanagan side, with its roots in County Limerick.

I hadn't looked at those siblings' test results for years. I had originally asked each of them to test as part of a project for a DNA class I was taking, and each candidate had kindly allowed me to serve as the administrator for their test results. Though that project was undertaken years ago, many more matches have been added over the years. I'm curious to see whether that geographic signature still holds for each sibling's DNA test results, and whether there might be any new matches who connect with our Flanagan line.

It will take some time to review it all, but hopefully by Monday, I'll see some new possibilities.

Don't Blink

 

Now that AI for family history has become all the passion, it seems as if DNA testing has taken a back seat. Not that it has become the red-headed step-child of the genealogy world—that happened after the Golden State Killer case became the breaking story—but there aren't quite as many breathless announcements posted on the topic lately.

Given that observation, I was almost surprised to see a banner pop up on my screen when I decided to take a peek at the latest DNA results for my tests at Ancestry.com.

Really? Ancestry is investing in upgrading their DNA services? I thought no one was talking DNA anymore...

Of course I had to click the second button, "Learn more."

And then, I waited.

The screen seemed to struggle to move ahead to the next item. Finally, it gave up with a screen left blank, all except for an "Ask Leaf" in the lower right corner. I guess AI won, after all.

I blinked. And I guess I missed it. I tried looking again, starting from the beginning of my search. This time, the announcement box didn't even show up. While I'm hoping that Ancestry delved further into accuracy in predicting close family relationships—I'm just really keen on reading their white papers—I've been quite happy with what they've already provided their DNA customers. But better is always, um, better. Right?

Not Bad, for Being Stuck

 

It's time for my biweekly check-up. Being stuck on John Kelly—as in, I can't find word one about the man's roots in County Kerry before his marriage to Johanna Falvey—I suspected that the count this time would be underwhelming. Actually, it wasn't.

That fact can be credited to my habit, over the past several months, of not letting go of previous months' research goals. There are always loose ends to tie up into a tidy resolution, and I can't bear to let family history mysteries remain unsolved. So this month became the perfect excuse to pick up a former month's unsolved puzzle, and to continue building on to that branch of my mother-in-law's family.

Thanks to the effort there, 206 more individuals found their place in my mother-in-law's Jackson line, that colonial line from New England which migrated westward through upstate New York, then on to Pennsylvania and Ohio. Boasting a start with a family of thirteen children, that Jackson line is sure to provide our family with many DNA matches, so I'm keen to research all the lines of descent. It was no surprise to learn that a little effort over the past two weeks provided documentation for that many Jackson descendants—all while puzzling over my Kelly brick wall from this month's research puzzle. That brings my in-laws' count to 44,208 relatives stretching back multiple generations.

Needless to say, nothing has been accomplished on the 41,957 names in my own family tree, a task I won't pick up again until this coming October. Nor has there been much to augment the Kelly line. Behind the scenes, that challenge requires some background research. Hopefully, that will yield results over the next two weeks—or I'll face finding myself reaching back to this research goal in months to come, just as I've found myself doing with the Jackson line.

When There's No One to Look Back to

 

Yesterday was a day spent observing people ask each other where their ancestors were in 1776. For some, the answer was a proud, "right here in America." For my father-in-law's Irish roots, the answer could only have been a guess: somewhere amidst the green, green hills of Ireland.

Truth be told, as I tally my biweekly count once again, the amount of progress I made on my in-laws' family tree this time was not owing to a momentous discovery concerning my father-in-law's Irish forebears. For that question, I am still squarely stuck in the mid 1850s; there are simply no records available to pull me deeper into history.

I did, however, manage to add 373 additional documented relatives to that family tree, but only thanks to work done behind the scenes on the relatives from my mother-in-law's side, ancestors I had puzzled over this past spring. I'm still on the hunt for the parents of her brick wall second great-grandmother, Lydia Miler. Besides that, I did realize that her Jackson side did handily pull me back before that mesmerizing 250 mark on yesterday's calendar, so I worked on descendants from that line in hopes of confirming some DNA matches. There are so many yet to work on there.

That tree, as you can imagine, has been growing steadily despite the brick wall research obstacles. Right now, I count 44,002 documented relatives on the combined tree for my in-laws. On the other hand, not much has happened on my own side of the equation, where the tree count is still holding at 41,957. Come this fall, we'll turn our attention to that side of the family, but next week, it will be time to return to the question of John Kelly and his origin in County Kerry, Ireland.

Each Step Makes the Next One Easier

 

As I work through the finishing touches of last month's research project, adding DNA matches to my mother-in-law's Jackson ancestors, I realized one encouraging detail. For every DNA match whose place I secured in her family tree, it made the next step easier to complete.

There are requisite tools to have at hand in order to make such a statement. I'm working now on those Jackson DNA matches by way of Ancestry.com's ThruLines tool, along with their ProTools capability of listing shared matches. Each identified match fills a known place in the family tree, thus becoming a beacon of relationship for all the others in this line, no matter how small the match may be.

The last time I checked, that Jackson progenitor, Lyman, had seventy three matches listed in his ThruLines results. But for each of those seventy three, there are multiple others who show up if I click on the Shared Matches tab under ProTools. Many of those share very little genetic material with my husband, the proxy test taker for this project. Yet, bit by bit, identifying each one's place in the Jackson family presents a second helpful clue by showing me how even more mystery matches fit into the tree.

It's amazing to see how many DNA matches turn out to have siblings, parents or children, or close cousins who have also tested. Identifying one's place in the tree brings the others into the picture more clearly, multiplying my effort. All I need to do is keep at it, adding more and more matches until I run out of options. Then, usually after a short waiting period, even more DNA matches show up—perhaps thanks to a Father's Day sale or other promotion—and the relationship clues help zero in on where the newer ones belong, as well.

I'm still quite a long way from completing those seventy three ThruLines matches—plus those other affiliated cousins—but it has helped find some otherwise invisible Jackson descendants. Of course, only six of the original thirteen children of Lyman Jackson have appeared in those DNA results, represented by their descendants, but I'm hoping this process will coax some of the other Jackson lines out of their hiding places and onto my mother-in-law's family tree. 

Dime a Dip

 

Yesterday's summer cleaning adventures—both of the real-life and genealogical kind—brought to mind some unexpected memories. On the real life front, cleaning projects unearthed an unused gift certificate for one hundred dollars—an impressive gift when it was received years ago, though just enough to purchase a decent restaurant dinner for two nowadays.

A day's worth of such discoveries, going through old files in the summer heat, was enough to prompt our family to head to our favorite ice cream shop after dinner. That, in turn, put me in mind of the dime-a-dip ice cream parlors of bygone years. Perhaps it was owing to the many projects unfolding during the day in our family—our daughter was helping a friend explore potential real estate projects, comparing prices today with original purchase prices on eighty year old homes—that put me in mind of an entire world of dime a dip life.

Meanwhile, on the genealogical front, I was delving into my mother-in-law's Jackson roots, a reach so far removed from today's generation that I barely can find matches who reach a mere ten centiMorgans of shared genetic material. As rarified as that "dime" of genetic material may seem in today's inflated economy, just like the dime-a-dip of the ice cream world, it can yield some useful results. 

This was my day to chase those "shared matches" of Jackson descendants to help build out that family tree. Simply by using the ThruLines results for Lyman Jackson, my mother-in-law's fourth great-grandfather, I used as a next step the "Shared matches" option from Ancestry's ProTools to find close relatives to each Jackson DNA match.

One after another, those mystery matches who shared such dime-sized genetic results helped guide me to build out that Jackson branch on my in-laws' tree. Yes, of course I used documentation to verify connections; it's just that without that chain of discoveries, I would otherwise not have known to even look in those directions.

Such small DNA matches are often lost in the myriad results at the bottom of the pile. They otherwise would have totally stumped me—if I even bothered to try connecting them to the family tree. But with the right tools, and a huge helping of patience added to the mix, it is possible to let each match find a place in the family tree, no matter how small. 

A DNA Housecleaning

 

Face it: when confronted with twenty thousand DNA matches, it's hard to place those distant relatives in their place on the family tree. Far easier to concentrate on the other, smaller category—fourth cousins or closer—for whom we have much better chances of confirming connections.

But—and there always is a caveat—since I've decided to pursue DNA cousins who share descent from my mother-in-law's fourth great-grandparents Lyman and Deidama Jackson, her proxy test volunteer (her son, my husband) must find connections with matches who are at least sixth cousins. That's where we start dipping into that larger pool of twenty thousand contestants. Facing a number like that, it's time for a DNA housecleaning.

That larger pool of possible cousins is further restricted by genetic limitations. After about the level of third cousin,  some distant relatives will share no identifying genetic material at all with a percentage of their cousins. That is not to say, of course, that there is no DNA shared at all. There is a high percentage of genetic material that all human beings have in common—it's just that the selected SNPs that genealogy companies use to identify closer family connections may not include the array of items passed down from specific distant ancestors.

However, combining use of both a paper trail of documented family connections and data about distant DNA matches may still confirm a distant cousin's place in the family tree, despite sharing only a small number of centiMorgans. In such cases, what I've done is build out the lines of descent from the distant ancestor—the Jackson line in this case—then move from already-confirmed known cousins to "shared matches" identified by tools such as Ancestry's ProTools.

Of Lyman Jackson's thirteen children, there are six whose descendants are itemized in the ThruLines listing at Ancestry.com. Of course, the bulk of those matches come from John Jackson's own line, which is the line of descent leading to my mother-in-law. However, through this process I've managed to connect the majority of other ThruLines Jackson cousins to her family tree.

From that point, my next step is to take each one of those verified Jackson cousin matches and open the "Shared Matches" tab on their own entry. I then look to see how many of those connected cousins I can trace through the family tree. Sometimes, that task presents problems, but in many cases, that two-step sweep leads to discovering other Jackson descendants among those twenty thousand distant matches. And each match confirmed makes the next ones easier to place, as we place more pieces of the puzzle where they belong in the tree.

From there, it's basically "rinse and repeat" as far as I can go with that same process. Bit by bit, it opens up possibilities for where DNA matches fit in the bigger picture of a much-extended family tree. 

More Month Than Projected

 

I remember a phrase from my starving student years, something about always having more month than money. I've always hated running out, no matter what supply was dwindling too fast for comfort. Thankfully, I'm far from those student years, but I still struggle with any sense of not having enough.

How strange it is, then, to find myself with more month than research project. With each month's Twelve Most Wanted candidate, I usually run out of material to secure my research goal before I get to the close of each month. What a shift it has been to find myself ten days away from the start of a new month, yet finished with the goal for that time period.

What to do next? Granted, I could just jump ahead and move on to July's project. With the shift in this upcoming quarter from my mother-in-law's family to that of my father-in-law, that might work, but it would take a leap from colonial American research to the brick wall woes of tracing Irish immigrants back to their beloved homeland. That may become a project never completed, no matter how many months are allotted to the effort.

However, there are so many odds and ends scattered in my wake as I plow through those family history questions each month. What comes to mind most are the DNA connections hinted at, but never quite confirmed, from the collection of literally thousands of matches. 

I'm thinking mostly of the thirteen children of Lyman and Deidama Jackson, whose lives spanned the era in which a nation was birthed. When we last left that endeavor to document the Jackson family, all thirteen children had been identified—barely. There is so much more yet to do.

There are now seventy three DNA cousins among my husband's Jackson matches, according to Ancestry's ThruLines tool, cousins who descend from that couple we had followed for April's version of this year's Twelve Most Wanted. It's time to wrap up those dangling strands and tie them into this family tapestry. Sounds like a "summer cleaning" project to me.

Tipping Towards Summer

 

Perhaps there's something about passing the longest day of the year that begs me to crest other tipping points. We've waved the flag for Flag Day and bid everyone a happy Juneteenth while celebrating dads and the last of the grads. It's time to get on with summer. For some reason, I'm already chomping at the bit to move on with my next project before July ever gets here.

First, though, comes some spring cleaning. Yes, I know we are officially into summer already, but there is no such picturesque way to classify summer cleaning. Dusty, sweaty, and chores are words that come to mind for such a designation, but what I've been working on in the past two weeks has edged into something far less distasteful than that.

Having decided that I'm as good as done with this month's research project—finding the roots of Elizabeth Plummer Ijams, my "Twelve Most Wanted" for June—I decided to do some cleaning up of old projects which didn't have the luxury of acquiring the satisfying label of "done."

First on the list was to return to May's research project, my quest to discover the parents of my mother-in-law's brick wall ancestor, Lydia Miller. I continued building out the lines of descent for three DNA matches sharing ancestors by the name of Anspach, a surname strangely linked to the circle of people connected with Lydia in her earliest years. There's still a lot of work yet to do, but I'm edging closer. Maybe next year, I'll finally cross that finish line.

Next came a general housecleaning of all the open tabs on my computer. When I am building out a line of descent, I keep a tab open specifically for that family. Locking that tab in place allows me to return to the place where I last left off with that family, making it easy for me to pick up the trail at a moment's notice. I went through each of those tabs—after a year or so, that collection can grow cumbersome—and deleted those which are not on my research radar at this point.

That process left me with some Polish lines remaining from my father's ancestry, plus some other more recent lines I'm still wrestling with. All that considered, I actually gleaned eighteen more names for my father's side of the family tree, so that count edges up to 41,957 documented people.

The main focus for this month—actually, the culmination of three months' work—has been my mother-in-law's family. Granted, I didn't add many people this month as I wandered through reports of colonial family in 1600s Maryland, mostly because seventh through tenth great-grandparents won't add much meaningful data for my quest to place DNA cousins in that tree. But in returning to Lydia's project—a much closer reach for my mother-in-law's second great-grandmother—I had plenty to add to that tree.

All told, the past two weeks advanced the count by less than usual—166 new relatives—due to the different nature of the work on those Maryland ancestors. My in-laws' tree now contains 43,629 documented individuals, a number that will remain at about that level as we close out this month's research project.

For the last few days of this month, I'll revisit a few of those older projects and provide updates. After that point, we'll jump into summer both feet first as we move from my mother-in-law's family to my father-in-law's Irish roots. Hopefully, new resources there will allow for some encouraging progress in our research for that side of the family. 

Stepping Backwards to Move Forward

 

Sometimes, a step backwards can get us moving forward.

After working on my mother-in-law's Ijams and Plummer line for half a month, I thought I'd check on the most distant ThruLines report for that family line at Ancestry's DNA to see if there were any updates. There were—well, there were, if you count a diminishing number of results as progress. 

In the past, Ancestry's ThruLines had shown five or six children descending from William Ijams, grandson of Elizabeth Plummer Ijams, and fifth great-grandfather of my husband, who is the surrogate tester standing in for my mother-in-law. Today, however, there were only two descending lines, and each of them, thankfully, can be confirmed through documentation.

Since connections with fifth great-grandparents is as far back as ThruLines shows for autosomal DNA tests, William himself would have to stand in as proxy for his paternal grandparents' DNA composition—the best I could do under these testing conditions.

Today, however, those stray other lines—names listed in previous ThruLines results that I hadn't been able to confirm through documentation—have simply vanished. Poof! If the DNA test candidates represented by those ThruLines results were indeed distant cousins, they obviously must have been connected through a different genetic route. Perhaps, someone had presumed there was a connection and had made a mistaken entry in their own tree which, repeated as others copied that tree, got picked up by ThruLines.

Though it is theoretically possible to find DNA matches who share a most "recent" common ancestor at a level of seventh great-grandmother, as Elizabeth Plummer Ijams would have been to my husband, it is not likely to confirm such a match. On average, DNA matches who are eighth cousins, as such a descent from seventh great-grandmother would yield, would share 0.000763% of their genetic makeup, according to a chart drawn up by Hope Carnicle, reported by a post on the ISOGG.org wiki.

In other words, eighth cousins could share up to forty two centiMorgans. Or they could share none.

In most cases, we'd never see such DNA matches, because the odds are against us. In my mother-in-law's case, a second strike would come in the form of multiple intermarriages over those many generations spanning her family's heritage, so even if a segment match registered, we'd have to delve deeper to determine which ancestor actually contributed that match. It might not be the ancestor we were suspecting.

In the end, while this change in results at Ancestry's ThruLines report doesn't strictly lead us to matches who share Elizabeth Plummer's DNA, it does zero in on those matches who actually were descendants of Elizabeth's grandson William Ijams. A far more accurate report may do nothing more than bolster my confidence in the tool, but a gesture like that can go a long way, in my opinion.

Building out the Lines

With one week devoted to wrapping up Lydia Miller's story and another week tracking Elizabeth Plummer Ijams, the current biweekly report has produced 287 new additions to my in-laws' family tree. Granted, most of that increase is due to building out the lines of descent for Lydia's two families—Gordon and Palmer—but I suspect we still have much more to learn about this month's Plummer and Ijams pursuit.

With those newly-added relatives, that tree now includes 43,463 documented individuals. Of course, while I focus on my mother-in-law's sixth great-grandmother Elizabeth this month, there's hardly time to take a peek at my side of the family. That tree now is holding at 41,939 individuals, and will likely remain that way until the fall, when I turn to my father's tree.

Meanwhile, with this coming week, it will be back to the records, seeking mention of yet another invisible woman, this time in documents from the late 1600s and early 1700s.

Whether digging deeply into colonial Maryland records produces the same amount of resources for the Plummers as Lydia's nineteenth-century lifespan yielded for us last month is yet to be seen. Right now, the quest for Elizabeth's story involves far more searching than it does documentation. Thankfully, there are some trailblazers out there to help guide our research path. We'll take a peek at what can be found in the writings of one genealogist tomorrow. 

Taking a Tip From Last Month

 

Since June is my month to research my mother-in-law's Ijams ancestors, I've been stretching back through the generations far beyond the usual reach of autosomal DNA testing. After all, Elizabeth Plummer was my mother-in-law's sixth great-grandmother, thus making her seventh great-grandmother to the surrogate test taker in this line (my husband). It would be a rare hit indeed to be able to find a DNA match who was an eighth cousin descended from that seventh great-grandmother.

Rare—but not impossible. Keeping in mind my experience from last month's research project, I thought I'd take a tip from what I did to find—and isolate—matches who were related to Lydia Miller. Last month, I used an unusual but related surname which I knew would be far easier to isolate than the ubiquitous Miller surname. I then took that surname—Anspach—and plugged it into the search bar for all my husband's DNA matches. That was how I came up with three viable Miller DNA matches without having to sort through numerous unrelated Millers.

This month, I'm looking for a maiden name which, although not as common as Miller, certainly is more popular than Anspach. I took that Plummer surname and repeated the process I had used to figure out how Lydia Miller's unknown ancestors connected to my mother-in-law's family.

I can't say that I had the same luck I had experienced with the previous month's process. Apparently, there were more Plummers in collateral branches of our DNA matches than I had seen for last month's Anspach attempt. 

Thinking again, I decided to try that same approach with a variation: instead of Plummer, I next searched for Ijams. But Ijams starts to edge into "endogamy lite" territory. The search results brought up matches who descended from related surnames which have also woven themselves into this intermarried family. That wasn't going to lead me to any answers, either.

Apparently, every research quest varies enough to require a different approach. Last month's tip doesn't seem to work for this month's research problem. While I did find a place in the family tree for several interrelated Metzger and Snyder DNA matches connected to this line, this still leaves me searching for any Plummer-Ijams matches among the thousands yet to place in my mother-in-law's tree.

While the forward-looking approach hasn't yielded any discoveries this month, perhaps delving back into Maryland history may provide some insight in the Plummer family and how they got from the home they left in the mother country to a fresh settlement in a wild and new world.

Messy or Not, it's Time to Move on

 

Despite a messy research detour while puzzling over Lydia Miller's roots, at the end of the month, it's time to move on. My mother-in-law's second great-grandmother will have to remain a mystery for another year.

Still, there are several observations gleaned from this month's meandering research trajectory. Most helpful was the realization that my husband, the designated DNA tester for this line, had matches reaching back to ancestors bearing that same Miller surname. My goal this month was to isolate those DNA matches who, while related through a Miller line, were not connected through any of the other intermarried lines from my mother-in-law's "endogamy lite" family.

This process yielded DNA matches whose founding ancestor—at least as far as we can tell at this point—was either Jonathan Miller (of unknown parentage) or Solomon Miller, son of George. 

While I wore myself to the bone searching for ancestral connections preceding those Miller men, in retrospect, it occurred to me that perhaps seeking Miller roots might have been the wrong approach. There might have been a second way these Millers were related: through their wives. Jonathan Miller, for instance, had married Catharine Dupler. Solomon Miller, while marrying a woman whose maiden name has seen various spelling permutations—Auspaugh or Anspaugh—may actually have been the son-in-law of David Anspach of Perry County, Ohio.

If that were the case, David's sister Anna Elizabeth Anspach would actually be mother of Jonathan Miller's wife, Catharine Dupler. In other words, Catharine Dupler Miller and Malinda Anspaugh Miller would have been first cousins. The grandfather they shared in common would be Johann Adam Anspach.

Whether that means my mother-in-law shared that Anspach ancestor, I can't yet say, though it is now obvious that these two Miller wives whose descendants ever so slightly match my husband's DNA must be in the picture for future research. Finding Lydia Miller's roots will need to be an ongoing project for next year, but finding that connection through their wives, not the Miller husbands, is at least an encouraging discovery to reference the next time we return to this research puzzle.

Messy Discoveries

 

While family history researchers may hope for a streamlined outline of their ancestors' key life events, that is not always how the search progresses. When it comes to piecing together supporting documentation, there may be twists and turns. Today, I ran into one messy discovery that seems to turn the Miller family story on its head.

Having found the 1850 census showing Solomon Miller's widowed mother Catharine still living in Perry County, Ohio—and not in Indiana, as one biographical sketch of Solomon's life had claimed—I decided to look for corroborating evidence. 

Stop one was to look for what became of the two other people living in the widow's 1850 household. While I have yet to figure out who the child, Ann Boyer, might have been, verification on Catharine's mother, Catharine Humberger, was easier to find. At Find A Grave, Catharine Humberger's still legible headstone showed her burial place to be at the Zion Reformed Lutheran Cemetery in Thornville, Ohio, a village situated in Perry County's Thorn Township, where we had found her living in the 1850 census.

As often appears in Find A Grave entries, this memorial for Catharine Humberger included information provided by volunteers. A note indicated that this Catharine's maiden name was Snider, a pertinent discovery for tracing my mother-in-law's line, which is full of Sniders. A Find A Grave volunteer also provided links to three other memorials related to this Catharine, including one for Catharine Humbarger Miller, the mother of the Solomon we've been researching this week.

Looking at that linked memorial for Catharine, Solomon's mother, brought with it a surprise: according to that volunteer-provided information, Catharine was married twice. Her marriage to George Miller came after her previous marriage to someone named Herbert Winegardner.

Perry County being what it is—a place where many longstanding residents found themselves related to each other in multiple ways—this was not encouraging news for a researcher using DNA testing. Not only would the Snider connection cause problems seeking clarity on the Miller line, but my mother-in-law's Perry County roots—to say nothing of my father-in-law's connections there—intertwine with the Winegardner surname as well.

The Find A Grave information indicated that the Winegardners had a daughter born in 1816, as well as a son born in 1820, the same year as Herbert's death in 1820. That would explain the female in Catherine Miller's entry in the 1830 census, long after the deaths of both her husbands, Herbert Winegardner and George Miller—and discard my hoped-for resolution of where Lydia Miller, my mother-in-law's second great-grandmother, fit into the picture.

That, at least, was according to the entries provided by Find A Grave volunteers. You know I had to check those details.

My first stop was to look for a marriage record for Herbert Winegardner and Catharine Humbarger. Voila! Thanks to FamilySearch.org, in a snap, I found a handwritten—and rambling—entry in the records for a May 7, 1816, marriage in Fairfield County for "Harbert" Winegardner and Catharine "Humbarge." (The record also indicated an alternate spelling as Humberger.) And the location in Fairfield County? Not to worry: Perry County wasn't established until two years later, when it was carved from Fairfield County in 1818.

So far, so good, right? Next step was to look for a marriage record for George Miller and a widowed Catharine Winegardner. Easy peasy: an 1823 entry, possibly signed by the same minister who had performed the earlier Winegardner marriage in Fairfield County, verified the Miller-Winegardner ceremony.

But wait! There is a problem with that second record. If Solomon's father George Miller died three months before Solomon was born in 1822, it would have been an eerily otherworldly ceremony indeed, if his father married his mother almost a year after that point. Not to mention, ten years after Herbert Winegardner supposedly died in 1820, there was someone by that name still showing in the 1830 census back in Fairfield County.

Complicating matters was the discovery that there might have been two Catharine Humbergers in Perry County, a discovery I made while mulling over all the Humberger men showing in Thorn Township in the 1830 census, some of whom were listed on the very page where I spotted Catharine Miller. Not to mention, after the demise of our short-lived George Miller, two others by that same name remained in Perry County in 1830, making it quite possible that we've been chasing the paper trail for the wrong name twins.

One result of these messy discoveries was to turn back once again to the published biographical sketch mentioning Catharine's son Solomon Miller. That 1907 narrative mentioned that Solomon's parents, George and Catharine, had been parents of ten children, the youngest of whom was Solomon himself. The three children counted in the Miller entry for the 1830 census were hardly ten, but perhaps they also didn't represent the two presumed Winegardner children.

With differentiating between name twins and ferreting out corroborating details, we may be facing some tree-building exercises for an ever-expanding Humberger family line. Or perhaps, delving into the identity of Ann Boyer, that mystery child in Catharine's 1850 household, might provide a shortcut to the answer identifying the right Catharine.