The more I see the less I know

Having just bought a Family Finder test from FTDNA for my grandfather's maternal Finks Cousin and having a nice long phone call with her to talk about the kit, I decided to go back and look at the Finks family records again to get a handle on things.

The mythology among people related to the Finks and Hibbard family is that Telitha Hibbard, my 3rd great grandmother who married William Jackson Finks is half native. There are a lot of these stories in the U.S. People say all kinds of things to explain differences in people. My dad and I don't carry more than a 0.1% amount of Native DNA. So probably within some margin of error, not even as much as we carry for African DNA.

I have generally disregarded the story because I was able to find Telitha's dad and see the marriage records for her parents. Her parents, Mortimer G. Hibbard and Philicia Jeffries (Jeffers) were married in April of 1845. Telitha was born around 1845..nothing firm there, but nothing real out of the ordinary either.

Like I said though, I kind of looked at it with new eyes after this phone conversation. I've been really picky about getting the details of my great grandmother's whereabouts in the lead up to my grandfather's birth in 1925 since I received the test results back from the U152 Thompsons.

Talking with this cousin about a family photo of the Finks at their farm and specifically talking about Telitha Hibbard and her sister Hannah..well I had to wonder if there wasn't something to it. They are obviously related women I think thier noses are strikingly similar (something that appears to have been handed on to Robert Sanford Finks) but they are also very different looking from each other too.

Here is the caption I found with the photo: From Far left; Robert Sanford Finks, William J Finks, Lily Finks, Telitha Finks, Susan Short (Telithas daughter from first marriage) ,& Earl Vivian Finks. Bottom from left: I think this is Minnie,(she would have died a few years after this pic though1870-1895), Hannah in Pic, and Ethyle Elnora (Nora).

Hannah Hibbard in the picture was William Jackson Finks' wife. After she died he married her older sister Telitha Hibbard (who had also been previously married).

Here is William Finks. 

Hannah Hibbard (Markley from a former marriage) in the photo

Telitha Hibbard (Short from previous marriage)

Okay, so "Looks like" evidence is the worst kind of evidence. I will give it to the story tellers, she does look darker and obviously has dark hair and some different features from her sister, but I've always thought about how different siblings can look from each other.

In my new eyes review of the evidence though, I found something striking. A death certificate index for Telitha Hibbard that gives a birth date. She is the first child of Mortimer Hibbard and Philicia Jeffries, but she is a bit too old for to match up to that. She was born in January of 1845 and her parents were married in April. 

I've seen a lot of people who are married and then have children born a few months later and the assumption is that they were making it legal. In this case though, Telitha was several months old when her parents were married. 

Now that is unexpected. Where was Philicia Jeffries in 1844? 

Her parents, William Jeffries and Anne Jett were married in Fauquier, Virginia and moved to Washington, Kentucky. Philicia was born in Kentucky but married Mortimer Hibbard in Illinois where his family had located from Ohio (and Vermont before that). William Jeffries died around 1823. In 1830 I find his wife Anne Jett Jeffries still living in Washington KY, but in 1840 she is in Edgar Illinois. I don't know what brought her there, but it put Philicia in range to be in Illinois in 1844 when she was (as legend would have it) "kidnapped by the natives and returned pregnant" with Telitha. 

The battle in the Finks family is not whether Philicia was kidnapped and returned pregnant, but by which group of natives.

That could be the case, surely the area was in some turmoil and had seen a lot of warfare between the the many various factions of French and Illinois natives, traveling Lakota and British and U.S. and Great Lakes nations. It's a big jumble there. It could also be that Philicia was involved with someone and it didn't work out and she moved on. Hard to say. People make things up and sometimes they don't and still other times they make parts of things up, but there are grains of truth.

In any case, I don't think either random kidnappers or people who willingly (or under force) moved to Oklahoma and Kansas in those years are going to be good record keepers. 

Still, since I have some record of Telitha's birth and it seems off, the idea that she is Hannah Hibbard's half sister is more likely to me than it was even a few months ago. Telitha would basically be Mortimer's step child who he adopted. It's unlikely she would have had a last name of her own.

That makes it extremely unlikely that I will find the Hibbard family through DNA testing...they simply are not there or should not be there. So the great leaps I made a few years ago in finding Mortimer Hibbard's parents and his family from Vermont will not shed light on genetic matches for my dad or my grandfather's Finks cousin.

Through genetic testing and documentation I've been able to sort of dismiss these stories as fable. I placed us in the great "Wannabe" tribe in the U.S. of blue eyed natives, or in some group that was afraid of it's eastern European, African or unknown Roma roots and had, maybe, picked a better story. I kind of shut the door on it. Even if it were true, I would never be able to figure it out.

What now though? 

Do I reconsider those matches whose grandparents or great grandparents come from reservations in Oklahoma or from Kansas with a native background? Can I comfortably and smugly dismiss it as coincidence anymore? 

I suppose in this instance I'll have to follow my leads as best I can and keep an open mind. What I know now is that there is a discrepancy that makes it seem likely to me that Telitha is not a "Hibbard" but is only a "Jeffries". Her father would remain unknown...but likely someone who was in the Edgar Illinois or Clark Illinois area in 1844.

The unknowns are beginning to overpower the knowns in my new-ish quest to define my grandfather.

Thinking About Switching

Since I took my first autosomal test in April of 2011 with 23 and me, I've been a pretty happy customer. I happily use the service and I appreciate some of the side perks (like getting a Y haplogroup as part of the test) even if some of the information is outdated...or not as in-depth. I also hate the idea of a de facto genetic genealogy company. All the groups and projects for genetic genealogy are dominated by FTDNA. I like that there is diversity and competition provided by YSEQ and 23 and me...but I also have to do what's best for me now.

Issues with getting information

Like a lot of 23 and me customers I think they are a bit too tight with the autosomal matching/ shared segments portion of the site. 23 and me makes you request sharing before they will show you where someone matches you. Most of us who have used the service blame that on a strict privacy policy adopted for health results testers...really the majority of their database is for health results so it makes sense for them to err on the side of caution. There has been an ongoing petition to make matching results and segment information available from the beginning but I don't think there has been any movement on that.

Those settings have been a relative hassle. You have to beg for information from someone before you have any idea what will be provided. The return rate is pretty low. If I ask 10 people to share I can expect 2 or 3 to take me up on it. Only after they share can I see where they match and which segments they share with other matches. Certainly there are many people I would not have bothered, had I known where they matched.

Short Comparison of Tools

The Family Inheritance Advanced tool is excellent if you manage to find it. I alert all of my matches to it's presence. You can check a match and also see exactly where they match with you and you can easily swap them into the number one position to check them against your other matches. So once someone shares they can be compared to everyone else you're sharing with exactly down to the segment. This is an enormous help when you are trying to determine if two matches are on opposite sides of the chromosome.

I checked out some of the tools on a friends kit at FTDNA. I may have missed an option on one of them, so this review of their tools is based on limited experience.

FTDNA provides a chromosome browser with similar functions for checking your matches and seeing exactly where they match you, but to see if they actually match someone else in the same spot is a bit harder. To get that information, I had to go to the matrix tool which is separate from the chromosome browser. That tool will tell you that two or more of your matches match each other which is helpful, but not exactly where.

I think FTDNA's implementation is clunky there. I've had it happen several times that someone matches me on chromosome 7 (for example) where they overlap with another match. So my next step would be to see if they match that other person there. When I check them against that match though I sometimes come to find that they don't match each other where they overlap on 7..but they do match each other on a chromosome that is not shared with me. So in one instance they represent a paternal vs. maternal match, but they also are related to each other somewhere else that doesn't concern me.

That kind of data is invaluable when you're working with someone who matches both your maternal and paternal families...or who just happens to randomly match someone in the group on a different chromosome than the one you're focused on. Not having it, could lead you to the wrong conclusions.

In this arena Gedmatch is really the king. Their comparison tools so far are the best and it's a donation run site. Still they've managed to womp on the pay sites by having all the information available right up front and showing you where matches match each other and you. Of course you have to choose to upload to Gedmatch.com and they have to be up and running.

The Matching Pool

At 23 and me, I have shared with about 470 of my 1200 plus matches. That represents three years of convincing people to offer up the most basic information you need to work in genetic genealogy..."where do we match". It's nothing to sneeze at because at FTDNA, I'm likely to only have 400 matches total.

Unlike 23 and me though, I won't have to work for three years just to see where I match someone. That information is there on the first day. I can download a csv file of all my matches and which chromosomes and segments they match on right then and there. Then I can make informed decisions about who to bother with family tree requests based on what I'm researching at the time.

I've heard rumors that FTDNA customers are more likely to respond to requests for information, but I've also heard from people who transfer that the rate for information exchange is about the same as at 23 and me and also that just about as many people have absolutely no family trees at all. So that seems like a coin toss.

For older V3 23 and me kits like mine, FTDNA offers a $69 transfer that puts your results in their database. Gedmatch of course does this for free and requests a donation. Still though there may be people who tested at FTDNA who just aren't ready to try out Gedmatch, so it would help to be in the FTDNA database for more coverage. Transferring at some point seems like a no brainer. It's something I should do, just like I did with my Y from ancestry.com.

I have a few more autosomal tests to purchase though and they are the tests I'm thinking about switching over.

23 and Me Concerns..or the things that are pushing me over

In the past, the general advice was to get your test at 23 and me, and then take advantage of FTDNA's transfer to put yourself in both databases. That is no longer possible. 

23 and me has a new chip, that is incompatible with FTDNA's transfer (although Gedmatch can manage to match them up just fine and I'm sure FTDNA just doesn't see the profit in spending time on it). So new kits purchased with 23 and me just don't have the option to transfer into FTDNA's database. That is one concern I have. One of the testing companies is now not like the others, and it's the one I use the most. My old kits will transfer just fine, but anything I buy from here on out will have to rely on Gedmatch.com as it's only cross company solution...and it's frequently down because it's a donation run volunteer site.

Although 23 and me has given up on health results (for the time being) and their focus should be on genealogy only, the strict privacy policies are still in place. Getting basic information is still hard and the return rate is still pretty low. Not getting  a share at 23 and me is crippling because you won't ever know where someone, who is anonymous, matches you and if they match any of your other matches.

Those are pretty big concerns, but the thing that really has me motivated to start purchasing tests elsewhere is how the purchase and execution of a test for my dad's maternal uncle has spiraled out of my reach.

A Rookie Mistake and a Losing Battle with Privacy

I purchased a test for my dad's maternal uncle from 23 and me. The focus of my research here has been on my paternal line but I value my dad's maternal family as well. The Seelyes were pretty well covered, but the Campbells were missing. My dad's maternal uncle has both and he would be my dad's largest match. His test would really help to define those families in my dad as well as defining the paternal side of many matches by the absence of a match with him on overlapping segments (Dark Side of the Moon).

It's actually the first time I've purchased a test for someone I have little contact with. The plan was that I would set up an account at 23 and me, purchase the test, send it to him. His part would be to spit in the vile and return the test unregistered. 23 and me would then notify me of the test that was turned in that I had purchased because it was unregistered and I would claim the test. All of that is basically laid out in 23 and me's policies and procedures. The goal there was simplicity. If I ship the kit to myself first so I can register it, then I have to pay for shipping to my great uncle..basically double paying shipping.

Unfortunately things did not go as planned. The kit shipped and then we lost contact with my great uncle. So I waited, and waited and waited for it to appear in my dad's list of matches. It never did. Finally I thought that maybe he changed his mind about testing. I've heard that 23 and me kits have an expiration at about a year. So now, a year later I worked through family members to get in contact with my dad's uncle to see if I could recover the kit in time to use it on a different relative.

This was a lot like cold calling someone, because I've only met the man a few times in my life. So I cold called an 80 year old man about something that happened a year ago. 

I asked him if he wanted the test and he said, at this point, no. I asked if I could take it to use on another person and he said. Other than the one I sent back?

wait...what?!?

Some more questions and quick searching at 23 and me show that he definitely registered the kit a year ago and it has just sat there ever since. Never showing up in my dad's list of matches and without any sort of notification. All of that due to the privacy settings on the account.

What follows is totally paraphrased, truncated and jumbled like my frantic mind. Just know that it was more tedious to go through than it was to write and that it encompasses a week or so of time.

Another phone call to uncle the next day: Can you remember your password? no. Do you know what email address you used? no. I'm going to call support to see if we can recover the results and get back on track.

Initiate contact with support. I explain the situation they inform me that they only communicate with the email account that registered the kit, not the purchaser of the kit. I tell them he may not have access to the email account and has forgotten his password.
If he has forgotten his password and cannot get into email he can fill out a form for support [address of form not given]. 

Another phone call to uncle a couple of days later: Do you have an email address? Yes [address here]. Do you check it? I think so. 

Me back to support: Look, here is his email, but I'm not sure it's the one he used to register the kit or if he can receive email there. 

Support case closed...fill out a survey to tell us how awesomely we helped you! 

wait...what?!? 

Comment from me on the support case: Angry tirade about how I don't think the issue was resolved and how I have more questions about what to do. 

From support: It looks like you want access to your uncle's results. You will have to work with him directly to get that. 

Another phone call to uncle...no answer. 

Uncle magically appears in list of relatives...after a year..immediately make sharing requests! 

Comment back to support. I don't think he can get into his email or his account at 23 and me. He's 80. Is there a phone number he can call? Also why does he appear in my matches now? 

Another phone call to uncle...no answer. 

Support: we only communicate with the email account that registered the kit. If your uncle cannot log in at 23 and me he will have to initiate a password reset.  

Me: The password reset is sent to the email account that he may not access! Is there another form of communication like a phone number. Have you attempted to contact him? What are the steps I should tell him to take when I call. If I'm going to be his long distance support, you need to give me the tools to do that. 

Another phone call to uncle...no answer. 

Support: we cannot communicate about your uncles test with you. He will need to initiate contact with support. Our primary communication is with email. Perhaps his appearance in your match list indicates that he can log in. 

Me: I don't know why he's appearing now. I'm not sure he's getting his email. I've not been able to contact him about it. What steps can I take if my uncle cannot get his email? 

Support: he can fill out a form [address given] to initiate contact with support. we only communicate with the email account that registered the kit. 

A quick look at the form shows the second field is the email address. Clearly, I'm not getting anywhere with this circular logic.  

Four more phone calls to uncle...no answer or response to messages. He could be out.  He could be on vacation. He could be sick. He could be avoiding these annoying calls from someone he barely knows...I don't know.  

Me: Okay if I can get back in touch with my uncle, and I have him fill out the form and he wants to inform 23 and me that his email account has been compromised, do I need to lead him through creating a new email account? 

Support: Yes. Indicate that the email account has been compromised and put the new email account in the comments. 

Support case closed.

At this point, I'm sort of worried about my great uncle. I don't know him very well, but he's fairly old and he's sort of disappeared. If my dad hadn't mentioned him doing something like this in the past, I would be even more concerned. Maybe this is just his pattern.

Because of my experiences using my dad's account, I know they ask for your answer to your security question for things like downloading your raw results. My guess is that a support contact to change your email address would follow the same protocols and my goal here is not to socially engineer 23 and me or my great uncle. It's really simply to see this basic information..where do we match and where does he match others I'm sharing with. I don't need his health results. They are useless to me because I already have my own.

My guess is that because he doesn't even want the account the results are not important to him. He was only doing it for my dad in the first place. He is caught in the default privacy policy and probably has some settings that would keep him out of the DNA relatives list.

Someone somewhere got into his account and changed some settings so he would appear in DNA relatives, but all that really tells me is that he is my dad's uncle...which I already knew. 

Now every time I look at my DNA relatives list, I can think about the 22%..really 44% of my dad's DNA I won't be able to define and about how a simple mistake in my planning and missed communication between family members can lead to this total loss of information. I may never get this opportunity to see these results again. I doubt my great uncle would take another test, assuming I can ever get in contact with him in the future. This attempt to catalog my grandmother has been a total failure.

The sad part is that if I had tested him at FTDNA, I would have his results without anything more needed on his part...which I'm pretty sure is what he would want. Now I have to try to get him to navigate this confusing maze of settings and check boxes or have him go through a password reset. Or not. Maybe he can already log in. I just don't know. 

I'm also impatient. I've waited for a year for these results. You'd think that would make me more patient but it hasn't. Maybe in a couple of months I'd be able to get in touch again and get more information. Maybe he'll be back next week. Maybe not. It's frustrating to be able to brush your finger tips on something but never actually grab it. I view the last year as lost time.

Making the Switch

Of course, I'm angry and I'm making decisions while I'm angry (ill advised). On the other hand a cost/benefit analysis is telling me that I'm already not getting the level of service I need to make informed decisions and that my preferred company is no longer compatible. Instead of bumping up their service for genetic genealogy like we all hoped they would in the wake of the FDA issue..it's just stagnating under the same rules they've always had, without the benefit of being able to transfer to other companies. Their focus is clearly on getting their medical information back online, not in making it easier for genealogists to use their products.

I still really appreciate the built in limited Y haplogroup which, with a little research you can match up to todays haplogroup listings..but I'm not sure that minor benefit outweighs the detractors. 

The writing appears to be on the wall. 

Why not Ancestry DNA? Simple. They don't offer any tools yet, that I know of, to actually compare segments of DNA. So it's less information than I need and I would have to go to Gedmatch to do any comparisons. Ancestry provides "leaves" saying you have a genetic relative who has matches in your tree, but no information about where they match making it possible to have a relative show up as part of your maternal family  because of a tree match, when really they belong on your dad's side. Both FTDNA and 23 and me win that one hands down.

Tests I purchase in the future for my wife and her family should probably just go to FTDNA where I already have some of her family members Y tested. Chances are I can use their current sample to upgrade to family finder and then check them against her. 

I should also purchase my mom's families tests there since I would also likely Y test one of her brothers to gather my Hutchinson Y DNA. I have maybe 3 more autosomal tests to get for them and a Y. 

Future autosomal tests for the U152 Thompsons could go there as well. With the option of checking my last 23 and me tested Thompson at Gedmatch.com for comparison.

The next test I plan to get for my dad is a test to define my dad's Finks family. I have another aging relative on that side who has agreed to do it. My plan was to order the 23 and me test and ship it to myself and then hand deliver it to this relative, but I think my plans have changed. Now I think I will ship a family finder test to myself instead and then actually transfer my dad's test to FTDNA too. Two Seelye relatives are already tested there so we won't be alone.

$99 for the FTDNA test and $69 for the transfer. Those are the minimal costs in switching my dad's results and having someone known to compare to. You might also count the $99 we spent on the lesson in privacy from 23 and me. It takes me sometimes a whole year to save up money for these tests but I think at this point, it will be worth it.

That is just the money involved. What really has me disappointed is the loss of information. My great uncle's results are available but they are untouchable..that's way worse than losing a hundred bucks.

..

Elmer and Elmore Recruiting for Y DNA tests

One of my Y matches has had a great idea and some early success. In my Elmore results post  I talked about our latest addition of another tester on the line from Edward Elmer's son John and comparing his results to the Elmers and mine.

We've decided to try to get men down the other lines too, so we can see how close they get.

Edward Elmer's son Edward has several descendants that move through New York. Placing them really well to be related to the New York Elmers. Since I appear to be a different version of them at this point, Edward2 would also be a target person for me.

Edward Elmer's son Samuel is very active on the east coast and elsewhere and I believe we may have a lead on a good candidate for him. Hopefully we'll be able to find a few more, because you never know..they could be that 100% match everyone is looking for.

We've been scouring family trees, census records and obituaries to try to find living descendants of these Elmers and Elmores to test. It's a real struggle.

First, they don't know who we are, so it's really hard not to come off as a sales call. Add to that that we're offering a free test and it gets a little harder for them to accept. People are right to be suspicious. There are real weirdos out there, so someone who wants to collect your spit and pay to have it analyzed is kind of in that category.

The second issue, is that it has to be a man at this point. The odds should be even, but we keep finding that several of these lines pinch down to only one son in a family or that they have multiple childless sons and only one son has any children. We can pretty easily get responses from women or from men related to Elmer and Elmore grandmothers and great grandmothers, but autosomal testing without a clear Y match would be even riskier than cold calling Y candidates.

The third issue is that from 1640 to now is a pretty long time and anything can happen. So even with the best trees and good research we could end up with an Elmer or Elmore who doesn't match the others. That would be my inverse I think.

We've got to try anyway. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

So far we've been turned down flat three of four times, although we do have one bright spot who hasn't totally cut off communication on the Edward2 side. So that is hopeful. We also have that decent possibility for Samuel too which would be great to get.

We'll also be continuing to push those New York lines to see if we can find yet more living men there too...fingers crossed.

R-U152 Thompsons - Begin at the Beginning.

I've spent a lot of time with my own Y and it's amazing how foreign another Y result can seem when you're used to staring down your own pattern. So I decided to get a handle on what the 23 and me Haplogroup results for my U152 Thompsons might mean. So I begin..sort of at the beginning of my own DNA search when I found out I was U106.

U152 also called S28 has a slightly different frequency map than I'm used t looking at:

Here is another one. I'm unsure what the stars represent:

In the discussion groups for this haplogroup, I saw lots of references to the Celts..which is pretty common in this part of europe. Italy and the Alps seem to be a hot spot. There is quite a bit of U152 in the Isles and I was heartened to see a Scottish cluster for a child haplogroup Z36. Not that that is where my Thompsons fit, but it was heartening to see.

I have more information than just U152 to work with. I know that my Thompsons are not L2 under U152. L2 seems to be the major branch of this haplogroup. The other main branches from U152 appear to be Z36 and Z56. So those would be my next SNP tests for these Thompsons.

Their Y pattern is just too generic to get a handle on. In their case, I'm always going to need to go back to the Thompson project because many people have not tested even to their level of SNP and they match most everyone in Europe at 12 markers. I need to test them out to 37 or 67 just to get a better resolution on the image.

The chatter I see on the internet for this group is the same sort of stuff I see associated with U106 in the Isles, although with less emphasis on the Anglo Saxons and more on the Celts and Norman/French. Ironically there was some talk of the Danes because of a penchant for S28 in western Denmark. 

I will have to see where the results take me. I'm tempted to further test their SNPs because that is ironically cheaper than upgrading their STRs. I would probably get the most information on matching Thompsons from those STRs though so they are important.

Overall this is a hopeful new start with fresh possibilities. 

The autosomal results I have for them won't make much sense until I have another test to compare to from the same family. So that will be my next step on that side of things.

Ball 2: 23 and me Results... the Harder-er Way.

As I talked about in three balls in the air and my Y breakdown post. I have been waiting for an autosomal match with my Indiana Thompsons trying to identify if we can find Ida Williamson in our shared DNA. I have a lot of autosomal matches that seem to float around the same locations as my Williamson family and many have turned out to be paternal matches for my dad.

The results are in. Of course this is where I'd like to announce that I've made sense of tons of matches and tied things up nicely with my Williamson family and at least half the people from Virginia and Kentucky..and well..that's not going to happen.

Unfortunately or..maybe... fortunately depending on how you choose look at things, there is no autosomal match with my closest Thompson/Williamson relatives. I have a good idea of the size and scope the match should be, but there are no common segments.

Further, when looking at the ancestry finder csv file, there appear to be no common matches with other people between the two. It is an absence of data. That can be troublesome. It doesn't really give a direction to go in. My hopes of finding common ground, even through an unknown adoption in the community, sort of went up in smoke.

I'm sure there is a probability somewhere that any two people who share a great grandparent will not show a match X times out of whatever..but our match already had some bumps in the road and this doesn't really instill confidence.

So what is the up side?

I now have a good haplogroup for my Thompson family. R-U152. It's a different branch of the Y tree from mine. Of course I was pretty certain that we were not a Y match and I had already let go of being able to find Levi through my Y since I have no promising Thompson leads.

I feel that I've verified my grandfather and my grandfather's uncle through Y testing the different sets of first cousins (see Y breakdown). The most likely culprit for being my grandfather is my grandfather. The same goes for the grandsons of  Francis.

This calls for a Y/Autosomal combo chart!

The divergent Y results are as shown in the last chart in Y breakdown for the descendants of Albert Thompson. Definitely two Y lines. The person I was trying to reach with the 23 and me results is Albert's wife Ida. The red dots signify autosomal tests taken. My dot is worthless here because I can only inherit DNA my dad has in this scenario..but there it is anyway.  My dad in this scenario is the stand in for my grandfather (the dapper boy pictured). Y test 2 took a test to stand in for the autosomal DNA of my grandfather's uncle Francis (the sharp looking light haired brother on the right there).

I cannot say that my grandfather is not the son of Ray Thompson, but it would mean that either Ray Thompson or Francis Thompson are totally unrelated to both Albert and Ida (Williamson) Thompson. That is an unknown. People are adopted sometimes from the community. I had hoped if there was some internal family adoption that the 23 and me test would show some level of cousinship, but at this time we appear to be completely unrelated people.

I have to go with what I DO know and put aside the question of Ray vs. Francis for the moment. I just can't prove Ray the way I can prove Francis. Not enough data for that.

The R-U152 Thompsons, to me,  have good chances of matching with other Thompsons (looking at their early results). There are some similar R-U152 Thompsons out there. Since I can get them further back in time on the Y than my own branch of the family, they also hold more hope of finding relevant autosomal matches. My dad has no Thompson cousins..so in that regard, I am dead in the water and stuck on my grandfather's paternal side.

My next steps with the U152 Thompsons will be to attempt a 23 and me test of the other Thompson cousin to play off the results of the first tester. Where they match each other will represent their shared set of grandparents. One of whom is a child of Albert Thompson and Ida Williamson. Using what I've learned following my dad's maternal family we can try to eliminate variables to identify Francis Thompson in that mix and through him reach Rosa Blades and Levi Thompson along with the Williamsons and Maynards.

I will also need to test their Y to 37 or 67 to get more definitive matches for them. That may prove to be the best way to get Levi by himself. Like I said, there are other U152 Thompsons in the Thompson DNA project so it looks promising to me.

On my end of things..it turns out, I have a more diverse family than I thought I did. I feel free to seriously and more closely look at the Elmers and follow my branch's R-DF95 Y results with them. It's a great big world and lots of things can happen.

Autosomally, for my side of things, I need to focus on defining the paternal Finks family and the maternal Campbells in my dad's results to eliminate variables and get a good direction on my new unknown. Do all the Kentucky and Virginia AT matches belong to the Finks or are there other players in other branches there?

I owe it to my Indiana Thompson family to follow through and take the evidence for them where it will go. Hopefully to Levi in Butler PA and beyond. I also owe it to myself to puzzle my own branch of the family out and see where that trail leads.

If my family members are still willing to put up with my nonsense, then I will be working a lot of different angles and paths in the future.

The descendants of Levi Thompson are proving to be as hard to nail down as the old man!

Ball 3: Results from Denmark

I attempted to contact four or five Cumberland candidates from Denmark. Some from Ancestry.com some from Ysearch and a couple from the Scandinavia project at FTDNA. Of the people I contacted three of them were definitely in the DYS458.2 section of the Cumberland cluster.

One of my contacts agreed to run the test for DF95 and just recently came back positive. So now we have a confirmed group member from Denmark, which to me was conspicuously absent in a group that appears to follow the migrations of germanic peoples so well.