Autosomal DNA...heavy sigh...I'm kind of tired

This is one of those Downers. 

If you're having a bum time with ATDNA and looking for a motivational post, then this is not it.

Having put ATDNA on the back burner for a couple of months, I decided to unsub from one of my favorite groups the DNA Newbie yahoo group. Likely not a permanent situation, I just wasn't really following it and any input I gave seemed to be negative..or at least not helpful. An ongoing discussion about the validity of segment lengths and triangulated groups was also just feeding the overall depression surrounding my lack of meaningful progress.

Since I got my results back from 23 and me in May of 2011, I've had my dad, his sister, a paternal first cousin one time removed and a paternal second cousin tested there, and a possible paternal third cousin 1x removed tested at Ancestry.com.  Along with those came individual tests from the maternal side of my dad's family; a second cousin one time removed, two second cousins and a first cousin one time removed.

What did I get?

Loads.

• My Y haplogroup was confirmed. 
• The maternal second cousin 1x removed proved our relationship to Myron Beadle and Ellen Hathaway. 
• The maternal first cousin 1x removed and Seelye second cousins, proved relationships to the Seelye family and provided a great way to juxtapose their results with the unknowns in my dad's DNA.
• We picked up one known relative of Daniel Abbe and Esther Nunn in my dad's maternal family and the segments did later prove to be maternal.
• The paternal first cousin 1x removed proved a relationship to the Finks family and covered a lot of segments which I had suspected were paternal based on mismatches with my dad's Seelye/Beadle relatives. 
• The paternal second cousin testing showed that we weren't related to our Thompson cousins which lined up with the Y DNA evidence we had. Not what I was hoping for, but it's a return on investment.
• The 3rd cousin range paternal person gave us hope of connecting to the correct Elmore family tree. 
• I got a triangulated paternal group connected to the Bolton family of Thomas Bolton and Jemima Hammack. I don't know how we connect, but it seems very likely that we do and that it's through my grandfather's family.
• We found out that my aunt is my dad's half sister. Not shocking since she had figured it out quite some time ago, but still it put a big mystery to bed.
• We found a triangulated group that connected her paternal family to the Robar/Robert family from Quebec. 
• My aunt also has a whopping good match (maybe at the second cousin level) with someone from the Winters family from Iron Mountain Michigan. That is not a family that my dad is connected to. So that is our best lead on her paternal family. Somewhere, I need to connect someone in the extended Winters family to someone in the Robert family.
• In my own autosomal results, I matched very well with someone related to my maternal Hutchinson great grandfather's sister Nina Hutchinson. The match was big enough and close enough that I haven't worried much about triangulating it.

I count those as my "wins". Most of them were hard fought and took a lot of time and patience. 

What didn't I get?

Seelyes, Beadles and Campbells.

Well, truthfully I haven't put a lot of effort into the Seelye/Beadle side of things. I'm not one of the major researchers on those families. I've focused on my Thompson and Finks families. Still though it is a minor disappointment that I didn't pick up anything I don't already know. The people tested are very obviously related to me in a time frame that we might see each other at a family reunion. Although we have some tantalizing clues to possible genetic relatives that migh break boundaries, my side of the genetic family has so many unknowns that it's hard to apply our results back to the rest of the family. So for all the testing, we're still stuck at the same brick walls and results from my branch of the family are sidelined.

Finks, Michell, McQueen, Jeffries

DNA testing in our Finks family shows that my dad and I are related to my grandfather's maternal first cousin. Great, because that means my grandfather is related to his mom. Unfortunately, only two shared matches (in all of her shared segments) line up with a known family. 

The McQueens. Our ties to them are documented, but not where it counts. With this single DNA match, that I've not been able to triangulate with any other overlapping matches and our documentation of a direct genetic relationship relying on a "county history" our connection is rightly (if disappointingly) disputed.

The Jeffries. One 9cM match nestled among much larger matches has a tree that runs back to the 1600s and our Jeffries family. The trouble is, none of the other matches (including the 26cM match in that spot) have anything of the sort. Their trees are either stunted or non-existant and none seem to share that same family. So although it continues to pass every test, I can't prove it with any other match.

Thompson, Williamson, Elmore

The Thompson and Williamson connection is a wash, but it was also kind of inconclusive. I have a lot of evidence that says we're not Thompsons and that we're not related to the Thompsons and Williamsons, but what it really boils down to is that I can truthfully say my grandfather was not related to his uncle Francis Thompson. No more than that. So while it would be unthinkable that we're Thompsons, it's not impossible. I would have to do everything I've done with my dad's results with our Thompson cousin's results. I just don't have the access to their autosomal DNA right now. I can show that we're not related and that we're not Thompsons, but I haven't yet shown that they are Thompsons either. Given my track record with autosomal DNA so far, I think I'll likely turn to Y DNA again for clues to their paternal family, and follow up on their Y results which promise to be more fruitful. 

The Elmores. I've got Y DNA matches all over the place with the Elmers and Elmores, but only back to the late 1600s. Autosomally, I can say I don't match any of the Elmers tested so far except for the one Elmore I recruited myself. Their result is exciting, but inconclusive. They don't share enough segments to be very close. Only one of the segments is show to be paternal, the other is unknown and neither of them triangulate to any known relative in the Elmore family. Of note though, they do match some people who are relatives of our Finks family. Along those lines they do run back to Virginia and the Fishbach family which is connected to Germanna like the Finks. Leaving open the possibility that, what I hope is a straight Elmore autosomal match, is really a match to the Finks family paired with a connection to a grab bag of other known relatives.

The Boltons

My stand out family. The one where it really worked. 10cM or better matches with the same set of ancestors. The same family appearing in trees from other chromosomes. Awesome! Now what? How do we get from Charles Thompson 1925 back to the 1750s to meet up with these Boltons? Dear God. Do you know how many descendants they have? It must be half of Kentucky. So while, I'm very proud of the accomplishment, I am no closer to figuring out how they might be related..I'm just very certain that they are.

For My Aunt

Once you show that someone is a half sister, the next question they're going to want to know is. What is my last name?

My aunt wanted to know if she had any sisters (she grew up in a family of boys). She wanted some basic information. Just the stuff we take for granted. To compound the issue, my grandmother refused to tell her who her father was, her uncle refused to let us use his test results for comparison and she is dying from kidney disease.

It is at this point that the normal things you deal with in genetic genealogy become overwhelming. 23 and me requires participation for anything, FTDNA requires contact to clearly triangulate and Ancestry.com is a black box that doesn't offer up any clues beyond a basic match list and a bunch of people who can't or won't share their family trees.

So far in helping my aunt, I've had the usual group of friendly people who don't know much about their families or ATDNA. I appreciate them a lot, but in the mix, I've also been lied to, misdirected, denied, and ignored.

All those things are also things I've dealt with when working on my dad's results, but when you're working under a time limit with a person who is dying, having to tackle the bulk of crappy human interactions can really bring you down.

People don't always get into genealogy because they want to share and grow. Some people want to hoard their precious and will do or be whatever it takes to make that happen. They want your help and information, but they don't want to give anything in return. Now, take that natural bias towards helping yourself and add something fishy like a woman who doesn't know who her father is...and he is somehow related to you. Well that kind of thing might threaten the precious. We can't have that.

So, with a non-communicative 2nd cousin at 23 and me, and multiple 3rd and beyond cousins who exemplifying the worst behavior in genetic genealogy, how much progress can be made? It's difficult under the best of circumstances, but just grindingly painful when you have to get around these people to get the information you need.

Setting it Down

For the moment. I need to take a break. It's painful to keep running into the same walls. To have to keep performing the same task over and over and to have to keep playing a weird game of poker with people to get useful information. 

It's draining and I'm not getting anywhere. Compared to the Y results and work I've done, autosomal DNA has done little more than show me what I already know...or shown me that I don't know..but has been light on answers.

I blame myself for letting it get me down and for not picking back up and running. I blame human nature for making people total turds sometimes. I blame the companies for willfully putting impediments in the way so that even people who weren't turds end up as defacto turds by product design. I blame the technology and a lack of clearly defined standards.

All of those things have come together to make ATDNA a grinding experience. I've put in a lot of effort and I've gotten some returns, but I've also chased a lot more geese than I needed to. I don't think I have very much to show for the time put in. 

So I'm going to let it go for a while and see what transpires while I'm away. I don't think I've hit the limit of what ATDNA can do, but I feel like I've hit my limit for running in the hamster wheel.

Autosomal DNA A tale of two stacks of pancakes

Basically, I like pancakes. So I think about autosomal matches and their segments like stacks of pancakes. Everyone gets two kinds of pancakes. One from your mom and one from your dad. Even if you don't know which one is which, you can actually start sorting them into those two sides.

I'm using 23 and me here because it has the most straight forward chromosome matching system I've found outside of Gedmatch.com.

So here's an example of a bunch of overlapping segments from genetic matches. This is from my dad's perspective. See chromosome 1 there with 4 little pancakes stacked up. He matches Thomas, Jeremy, Paula and Jenette in roughly the same area. Some pancakes are bigger and some smaller, but they roughly stack up.

That is a mixed stack of pancakes. We'll call them blueberry and strawberry. We don't know which are pancakes from mom's side and which are from dad's side or if all of them are from the same side.

For now we'll consider that they might be blueberry and strawberry pancakes mixed together.

The goal is to sort them into two matching teams. We want to know all the strawberries and all the blueberries and only compare them to each other.

Why? Well, we're figuring out which side of the family to focus on. When you're looking at family trees if you can narrow the results in any way, you can cut thousands of possible relatives out of the search, just by splitting your matches into sides.

From my dad's perspective we would have to search each family tree for each of four people for all the ancestors of each person back six or more generations. From my dad's perspective they could all be related to the same person. But what if they're not? Everyone matches my dad, but do they all match each other and therefore all share the same ancestor?

The way you find that out is by sorting them based on how they match each other. In genetic genealogy you need to see the world through someone else's eyes. I need to know which pancakes are blueberry and which are strawberry..if any.

So one way or another, I need to become one of the other matches for a moment and see how they see this same stack of pancakes. 23 and me and Gedmatch make that easy..you can just check people against each other to see how they line up. FTDNA comes close with chromosome browser and the matrix...Ancestry folks are on their own (they can't do any of this).

Begin sorting.

Let's become Thomas then. How does Thomas see this same stack of pancakes. The trick is, Thomas will only see his matches. He is either a blueberry or a strawberry pancake and he will only see his kind of pancakes in the stack.

Aha! There he is. Thomas matches Thompson of course..we knew that, but Thomas also matches Paula in the same spot. We can arbitrarily label them as strawberry pancakes. Of this stack of pancakes they only match each other and my dad.

Next step. Pick one of those 0 people who were missing. They "should" match each other, but we need to confirm it. Does Jeremy match Jenette?

Goal. Jeremy matches Thompson (as expected) but only sees his own kind of pancake, Jenette. We now have a blueberry stack as well.

Keeping in mind that I have no idea which side of my dad's family they are on..I do know that they are on one side or another. Further, I will only look for common ancestors between Jeremy and Jenette on the one side and Thomas and Paula on the other.

In this way, your segments (pancakes) can validate each other. They form "triangulated groups". People who match you and each other in the same area on a chromosome, thereby sharing a common ancestor among all the matches.

What if you go through this and there are no blueberries and only strawberry pancakes? Well, you'll just have to wait for some blueberries to show up. What if you find a pancake that doesn't match any of the other pancakes, blueberry or strawberry. That is a pancake that is probably an error. Someone who matches you by accident. Typically larger segments (pancakes) are less likely to be one of those accidental matches.

Just like with regular genealogy, genetic genealogy is skeptical. You have to PROVE IT. You can have hunches and that is okay, but it's not enough that two people who are genetically related have the same person in their tree.

You need at least a third person with that same ancestor to match you on the same chromosome, roughly on the same segment (a little bigger or smaller is okay). Just like you need more than two legs in a stool, you need at least three legs in a genetic match. Figuring out which legs belong on which stool is all a sorting game and you can do it before you ever look at a family tree. 

Segment Comparisons, Perspective and Inheritance

I wanted to post some examples of the differences between close relatives as they relate to more distant relatives and touch on inheritance and the luck of the draw. The reason for showing these is to give some sort of visual display of the ways in which related people match each other in different ways.

My Dad and I

I'll start with the one that I've had the most comments on at 23 and me. When people compare me to my dad they see something like this:

given the small format, you may want to click these to get a closer view. Above is my comparison to my dad. The comments I normally get from people are along the lines of "how can it be that you are exactly like your dad". 

The key is that my dad gave me half of his DNA. He built half of every chromosome I have (except the X). So I'm half identical on every chromosome. What it's easy to forget is that most chromosome browsers show you "half identical" segments...not fully identical. 

When you have a match to another person (unless they are a full sibling) you will normally only have half identical segments in common.

What I'm showing here is that for me, there is the opportunity to have a match to my paternal family on every chromosome, in every position. Even though every chromosome is covered, it's only half my DNA.

My Dad, his Maternal Half Sister and their Maternal Uncle

Okay. Time to add some complexity. Here is the broad overview of my dad, his uncle "R" and his half sister "C". This is from my dad's perspective his half sister only has DNA from their shared mother's family. His maternal uncle is his mother's brother so he has the same family in common. 

I'm going to close in on some of the chromosomes at the top to illustrate some differences. I apologize if you have trouble telling blue from green. I didn't have any choices for colors at 23 and me. My dad's uncle R is in green. Half sister C is in blue.

Things to note when looking at this. Notice that even though R, C and my dad all share the same very close family and all the same ancestors on my dad's maternal side, there are differences in how R and C match my dad. These matches represent DNA coming to my dad from his mother. 

You can see that there are places, like on chromosome 1 where sister C matches my dad but Uncle R does not. That makes sense because uncle R and my grandmother were not twins, they got different DNA from their two parents. 

You can see that there are places where uncle R matches but sister C does not like on chromosome 5 and a good chunk of chromosome 4.  Again here uncle R and my grandmother have the same DNA and my grandmother handed some segments down to my dad, but not his sister. This also makes sense because my dad and his sister are not twins. 

They both got half their mother's DNA, but the halves they got were not identical. The halves were randomly generated from all the DNA available to my grandmother.

Also notice these pictures compared to my match with my dad. Even my dad's uncle combined with his sister is not enough to recreate the DNA my grandmother gave my dad! There are maternal relatives in those white gaps that don't match his sister or his uncle.

From the Sister's Perspective

Now I want to look at these same matches from my dad's sister's perspective. The same three relatives all share the same family. The matches are similar in many ways which makes sense, but they are different in striking ways too. My dad here is in Blue and R again is in green.

Compare and contrast with the close up above. Sister C has a remarkably bigger segment in common with uncle R on chromosome 3. Where my dad has an amazing amount of white space, she is a half identical match to uncle R.

What is important there is what you don't see in my dad's close up. Remember that his mother fills up the entire chromosome for both my dad and C. It's not that he doesn't have relatives of his mother there, it's that they will most likely be different relatives than C and R have in that same spot.

For example. C and R may carry a large segment of DNA from one maternal relative while my dad carries a large segment there from another maternal relative. My grandmother had both to give, my dad got one and my aunt got the other. In really simplistic terms, maybe my dad matches his maternal great grandmother there, while C and R carry DNA from the great grandfather...or something to that effect.

What's the Point of all this?

The point is that even closely related people who share the exact same set of close ancestors and get huge amounts of DNA from those ancestors, do not get the exact same DNA from those ancestors. Uncle R is not definitive for my dad's maternal matches. Neither is sister C. Together they come very close, but still not close enough to cover all the ground. In those cracks are the exact same ancestors shared by everyone in the group, just broken up in a different way.

Somewhere, another cousin may fill the gaps in. Perhaps one of my dad's first cousins through a different aunt or uncle will hold the keys to those white areas. They will have matches to the same families but in different spots on different chromosomes.

Here is my last example image, I promise. This is from the perspective of sister C again. My dad is blue, Uncle R is green and common cousin P is purple. 

P is related to C and my dad's great grandmother Clara Beadle. Clara is uncle R's grandmother. P shares about 206 total cM with sister C, but I'm going to focus on chromosome 22 for a minute because it's a perfect illustration. 

Uncle R in green overlaps my dad a little there in blue. Both do not overlap with P, all are related to Clara Beadle in some way but that doesn't mean they will always match each other where P does because they all got different DNA from the Beadle family. Each of these matches could represent Beadle DNA. P cannot be the definitive check for Beadle DNA because he doesn't cover enough ground. 

Here is what I mean by P can't be definitive for Beadles in my family:

P shares 206cM on 8 segments with sister C.

P shares 156cM on 6 segments with my dad.

P shares 145cM on 10 segments with uncle R.

The Beadle family is about 1/4th of uncle R's DNA and yet P shares the lowest amount of DNA in total with R! My grandmother has more in common with P and handed more of those common segments to her children C and my dad. Uncle R is not less related to his Beadle grandmother than his sister was, he just got different DNA from her!

Autosomal DNA segment matching

Here is a quick and dirty picture of how I'm doing autosomal segment mapping. Forgive the tools. I'm using 23 and me because the bulk of my easily gathered data is there. I'm also using Gedmatch for an easy feature. I'm trying to get across a concept on this one.

Three people here. T, C and P.

C is the person I'm helping. They are the half sister of T. We start by figuring out our known people.

My end goal is to identify my C's unknown paternal family. Her closest maternal relative is T. I want to use T to sort matches.

This is basically an "In Common With" or "One or Both Kits" match. The question this answers is "Who matches both these kits". I'm checking T's half sister against him to determine their maternal side. This is the first question to ask about any match. Where do they fit and who do they match with.

P is going to be our unknown Person here. P is most likely a very good maternal match for C. Because C is my T's half sister, I am using their relationship as the known maternal relationship for C.

The next step is to see how P matches each person.

For that I'm switching back over to 23 and me. This is for a visual representation. You can use any tool for this. A spreadsheet would do something similar, but I want a visual representation. You could also check these kits individually at gedmatch to see where the segments were and then compare them against each other.

I'm going for simplicity here to illustrate a concept.

The key to this visual is that I can check P against both T and C. Yes I know they match each other but I want to know "how". With this tool (or a one to one comparison) I can see the match from P's perspective as well as C's. How does P match each person in this triangle?

I can visualize P vs C and P vs T.  T is in green and C is in blue. You can see that P matches both my T and C in many positions on many segments. There are lots of overlaps. Since T and C's relationship is known, those are most likely maternal positions.

P also matches C by herself sometimes though. You can see that where the little blue segments stand alone on chromosome 17 and 22.

Now for the counter check. I need to see if my C matches T in the same spots that she matches with P.

You can see here that C matches T on many segments. T is green and P is blue. For a lot of those segments P's match overlaps and matches the segment shared with T. Now I can look at those segments and assign them to C's and T's shared maternal family. The same segment matches all three people.

What about those little blue segments that don't overlap and match with T? Those are anyone's guess.

• They could be great leads to my C's paternal family. P may be related to C in more than one way. If I can identify P's match on those segments as paternal then P's family tree might be a good resource to finding C's unknown paternal family.
• They could be maternal matches that T just didn't inherit and outline a longer maternal segment for C. In that case it would be good to solidly identify them as maternal (using other maternal relatives).
• If they're small enough, they might be noise.

What if T had overlapped on those little blue segments but not matched?

It's most likely then, if a known maternal relative like T overlapped but did not match, that I have identified segments that show P's relationship to C's paternal family. P's family tree could then be a resource to find C's paternal unknown. 

As it stands, those segments warrant further investigation to see if I can get them assigned to a side of C's family. P is a "mostly" maternal match for C, with a few unassigned segments to be sorted out.

Autosomal DNA Mile Marker

Now that I have many maternal and paternal segments worked out I thought it would be good to put up some graphics of the general map. Again using Kitty Munson Cooper's segment mapper utility to get great visual representations of the segments using my dad as the base person.

To be clear, this won't represent all of the matches for my dad, just those known to be maternal or paternal right now.

Here are his Seelye Campbell and Beadle relatives along with other known "found" maternal matches.

Blue is a Beadle only relative. Light blue Campbell only. Red various maternal genetic relatives. Peach Seelye side only (would include the Beadle family DNA too). Green Seelye Campbell which basically represents everything Seelye, Beadle or Campbell.

You can see I have lots and lots of coverage with multiple maternal relatives, sometimes matching each other and sometimes going off on their own, but I benefit from having so many maternal only relatives to check against (up to and including my dad's maternal uncle there in green).

Here is the condensed version of that map. All maternal matches.

You can see there are some gaps, but with all those layers of relatives tested, we've filled in quite a bit. The X is all maternal, but those are the matches available which is interesting. Because of this coverage it is much more likely that I can place a match as maternal.

It's good to note here that the kind of coverage you see in the consolidated maternal map required four people at various distances to get tested.

Here is the one known paternal relative on our Finks side along with various paternal matches:

Light blue is anyone I've determined to be paternal. Usually because their group of matches does not match a known maternal group. Dark blue is the known Finks relative, sometimes illuminating unknown paternal matches and sometimes breaking new ground.

Here is the consolidated version of that map, all paternal including the Finks family. You can see that even though I am using the shadow cast from my dad's maternal matches, I am still struggling without closer known paternal relatives to test. My grandfather had no siblings and my attempt to fill in with our Thompson cousins did not show any matches, so there are more gaps to fall through on this side of things.

That may sound bitter, but I'm not. I am exceptionally grateful for my Finks family tester. I've learned a lot since getting those results back from FTDNA. I think doing this kind of analysis is just opening my eyes to the value of testing multiple known relatives on the same side of a family (assuming you can't test your target person..in my case my grandparents).

Here is a map showing both maternal and paternal segments as they overlap. It's a great display that shows what I'm missing on that paternal side.

In this instance, red is matneral and blue paternal. Paternal matches aren't breaking tons of new ground here, probably because the maternal coverage is so good. In many cases, it's not that I wouldn't know a maternal match from a paternal match, just that no paternal matches have come in.

You can see some of that in the maternal chart above that shows the breakdown of known Seelye side relatives compared to organic "maternal" matches found at 23 and me and Gedmatch. In that chart red is just maternal "found" matches, while the other colors (peach, green etc..) are the tested known relatives.

Without those known tester matches the map is even more bleak and for the most part, I would have no idea which side of the family a triangulated group of matches was on. So thanks go out to the "knowns"!

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.

..

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!

And so this is Christmas..and what have you done

I think since I've moved my Y DNA results to FTDNA, I've been able to take advantage of a lot of good testing and research within the FTDNA groups and also take better advantage of what I got from Ancestry.com. Last year, I thought my Y was a pretty obvious dud. Now I have what I think is a clearer picture of where my Y DNA ancestor was from..or at least the journey they took.

I'm pretty resigned that we're looking at Anglo Saxon England or some later migration from Flanders or Denmark before 1500AD. I think the Anglo Saxon/Frisian thing circa 500AD is most likely at this point but I can't totally rule out Flemish weavers or Hanseatic League members.

It's not shocking because I've been building this case for a while, initially with a lot of hesitation, but more recently with actual excitement. I feel like I've been able to move from a feeling of dread in the beginning that we Thompsons were not exactly like the other Thompsons to acceptance of a sort. Now I've moved on to learning about where we may have come from outside of the general mythology of Thompson-ness. I have actually enjoyed learning about these groups of people we call "Germanic".

I think the last few days have been an enormous success in that I feel like I'm seeing a pattern emerge that incorporates the Knowltons and Elmers that I've spent so much time with. I can see in the cluster at "Z18 and subgroups" a broad migration round the bottom of the Balitc Sea and over to England...or maybe what would become England in the future. As I watch this pattern play out I'm seeing a definite area of England for us and it's southeast England and maybe more specifically East Anglia although a paper trail to Kent wouldn't be a surprise either.

When I look at autosomal DNA I'm seeing some ties to the area as well, in the many matches that have roots in Suffolk, Essex and Norfolk. By the same token though I can't ignore my father's genetic connections to Germany and Ireland which remain a bit of a mystery. I could definitely see Germany through the Finks (Thompsons) family but many Germans have X matches which means it would be carried on the Seelye side, not the Thompson side. There is also a French component that is evident in our paper trail, but not yet making itself apparent genetically.

Clearly the Y DNA move was good for boiling things down and our autosomal DNA tests require similar work. Like the move for the Y, I should transfer autosomal tests over to FTDNA. Gedmatch.com has proven that the FTDNA database holds some clues for us.

In both the Y and autosomal cases my father and I can no longer be the only representatives of our family. We'll need others beyond the level of my grandparents to help us sort and order matches. Painfully, we'll need them for both the Y (because the Y is important for continuity) AND autosomal tests (because the Thompsons need help on all their lines) which costs money. For my dad it will become important to have a Seelye representative and a Thompson for autosomal testing. Eventually, if we can establish that the Y carries through to the Indiana Thompsons and we're not looking at a more recent NPE, we'll need to look at testing Y candidates from Butler PA..which is a shot in the dark with no guarantee of participation.

It's easy to forget, in the midst of all my talk about genetic testing, that we've made some good advances in paper work too. I think the John B Hollingsworth information is an important clue and gives a good time frame for a move from Butler PA to Madison IN. It's nice to have someone I CAN follow back to Pennsylvania with clear ties to Indiana. It may mean that I should focus more on the Thompsons in Grant Indiana where the Hollingsworth family settles down. All of that is totally paper trail driven.

I've also been able to make good progress on the Hibbard (Thompson/Finks) family totally with photographic evidence and paper trails and made progress on the Finks family itself using census records and oral histories from Finks related people in Virginia. We've had excellent success on the Thompson/Williamson front as well and added a wealth of leads for that family just by using the census to leap a missing generation. I know more about the Jeffers/Jeffries family (Thompson/Finks) than I did before and I may have some genetic evidence to support the wishy washy family trees coming out of Kentucky.

So you can't have just DNA testing alone, you have to be able to find records and connect with people if you're going to be able to make anything out of this mess. I'm lucky to live in a time where most of this work can be done online and I can take advantage of all the great work done by others to fill in gaps.

I think there are still many discoveries to be made and new cultures and histories to learn about and I'm still excited to see how things unfold and we haven't been totally backed into a corner yet. Big studies are coming out of England and Ireland that may shed new light on old data and as always, I meet new people all the time who give me great ideas and fresh creative perspectives.

Autosomal DNA Butler PA possibility?

One of the issues I've had with Autosomal DNA results is that I seem to be looking way to far back in time to match up with anyone near my missing realtives. As an example, I have several people born in the 1800s that I struggle to place, and I have nearly a thousand genetic matches with people who probably match me in the early 1700s. There's quite a leap of time.

Needless to say, Butler Pennsylvania matches are slim to none. I have a few genetic matches with family in Washington PA, but not Butler..until now. Now I have a single match with a person whose Critchlow family is from Butler PA in the 1800s. It was an awesome find! It was also frustrating, because there is no obvious connection with my Thompson family.

Aaarrgh.

In reality this match has family in the right place at the right time, but we could still really match up in the 1700s on a totally different line in a totally different town in a different state with anyone on either side of my dad's family.

The closest I come to something familiar is an offhand relationship between this match and a Bodine from New Jersey. Not stellar.

I still have hope of finding that connection somewhere though and I'll keep picking away at it. Since this and several other larger matches at Gedmatch.com are actually tests from Family Tree DNA it may be a good idea to pay the $50 and get my dad's test over there for a while.

Also it goes without saying that getting DNA from other known Thompsons would be helpful too.

Anthropology Closing the Gap on Genealogy

I was looking at my most recent map of people who are roughly like me at FTDNA who are also U106. It looks much like my other maps but just a little more focused. Having those extra four STRs from FTDNA really culled my matches down quite a bit. Still it's broadly German and English. Many of these people are also members of R1b-Z18 and a few are part of R1b-Z14 which are both under U106.

These are again people who match my "pattern" roughly, there are some markers off but overall they seem like me. I've color coded them so that Blue are just those with my rough pattern, Red are matches from FTDNA at 25 markers and the single Yellow is my match at 37 STRs or markers..I use those interchangeably.

When I talk about people matching my pattern, it means the pattern of short tandem repeats in my YDNA. Here is an example of several people who are in R1b-Z14:

Notice number two through four from the top down. They seem to have several markers or STRs in common, while the top one has many in common but not as many as the the three below seem to share with each other. You can begin to see a pattern in those last three that the first one doesn't follow. Notice also that the second one has more differentiation from the two below it. Those last two are very similar. At this level they only have one marker different. That is a closer match for STRs. My map above would contain 2 - 4 because they seem to form a rough group. Those STRs "suggest" a relationship. The closer the STRs the closer the suspected relationship.

I also talk a lot about SNPs. Single nucleotide polymorphisms don't just suggest a relationship they are the evidence of a relationship. People who share a Y SNP are definitely related to the same man, although it may be thousands of years in the past. It happens that in my example above, all those patterns in Y DNA are also people who carry the R1b-Z14 SNP. So I am related to all of them. At some point we all share a common male ancestor...of course that ancestor could be any time between now and about 0AD when it is thought the parent SNP Z18 came into being. Z14 itself has children which are younger than it. Here is an image of the ISOGG YDNA tree for my branch of  U106 as it stands today. Keep in mind that this tree is always changing as new things are learned. So like any family tree, it grows.

So there you can see U106 which I tested for with 23 and me (23 the north sea and me). Z18 is beneath that at about 2000 years old. Then Z14 is Z18's child. Beneath Z14 is Z372 and it's child (so far) L257. I've seen L257's age estimated at 1500 years ago. So somewhere between 1500 and 2000 years ago is Z14.

An actual map of people in R1b-Z18 or R1b-Z14 would probably look remarkably like my other maps here. Broadly "Germanic" with people in the Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany, England, Scotland, Ireland, Poland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland, Latvia and France. There aren't a ton of people tested in Z14 and Z18 so it appears more scattered and sparse than it actually may be. It is also basically the geographic area covered by U106 itself.

Here is an interesting map of Europe I found with rough borders for different groups about 1500 years ago:

You can see the Angles and Saxons right there on the top of Germany and eating into Denmark and then in Britain the Angles and the Saxons occupying the same sort of vertical space on the east coast. Angles are purple, Saxons..kind of puke mustard colored. U106, Z18 and Z14 would be represented in many of these groups and many that aren't on the map in Scandinavia.

What can we do to get closer than 1500 to 2000 years ago? Well, for that we go back to the STRs and suggested relationships. If I hone down my map to show just those people who match closely enough for FTDNA to list them in my matches at 25 and 37 markers I get something like this with the red dots being 25 matches and the yellow dot my 37 match:

This represents only my matches at FTDNA, both 25 and 37. All the dots except my friend in Germany there have tested Z18 positive. The yellow dot is Z14 positive.

It's possible that at the next test up I could gain or lose matches and that's the next recommended test for me. This is basically why I've picked out the Saxons for us. I don't think these groups are small enough to differentiate between an Angle and a Saxon and  I don't think the lines between people are as cut and dry as maps make them. You can get a rough idea though that people most like me are most likely in Britain, but also probably Germany. This could represent genetic evidence of the Anglo Saxon invasion of Britain or it could represent some later migration of "Germans" to England. Right now, given the ages of SNPs involved the consensus seems to be Anglo Saxons.

As things progress we may find further SNPs to split this group up and get tighter timeframes. Y SNPs will eventually enter the genealogical timeframe. When I started I was at cave paintings with R1b. Last year I was at 5000 years ago with prehistoric "Germanic" cultures and R1b-U106. Now I'm at 0 to 500AD, the fall of the Roman empire, Germanic migrations and the Anglo Saxon invasions with R1b-Z14. That's a huge leap in a few years.

Stinsons

Last year while working with two different genetic matches at 23 and me, I noticed that they shared the same Stinson and Bailey family. In particular they shared James Bailey and Margaret Stinson. Because these two people matched me on different chromosomes, I put it off as an interesting coincidence among people with roots in Virginia. Since I also have roots in VA, it's possible our match is there somewhere.

Here is a link to a family tree containing the Baileys: http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com/users/b/l/a/Norman-R-Blankenship-VA/WEBSITE-0001/UHP-0237.html

This year working with two more matches, this time they do share a match on the same chromosome, I found that one of them has a Stinson family and that the match is most likely on the branch of their family tree with the Stinson in it married to a Burkett. Their Stinsons go to the Carolinas. They also overlap with a person who has Stinsons, Barbers and Boulwares from South Carolina:
http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=marciamcclure&id=I5678

It turns out the Stinsons are Stephensons from Scotland. So I independently have four matches with Stinson/Stephenson connections.

There is a yest another person in this research mix who has no Stinsons (call her J) that I have seen so far, but does have a lot of Scots who move into Canada. On my grandmother's side, I also have Scots who move into Canada, but no Stinsons.

On the list of names from the memorial linked above, I do see some I recognize like the Strouds that appear to be linked to so many of my genetic matches and the Johnstons from  J's family tree. I also see Baileys from my matches last year (along with Stinsons of course). So this group from South Carolina may have  more meaning for me than I can fully realize now. Should I be looking for Stinsons and Stephensons in Indiana. Could these be a clue to Henry Williamson's wife or mother? Are they connected to my Finks or McQueen family? Is there more for me in Canada than I have seen so far?

Saxons Anyone?

I decided to post yet another map of matches. These are my 25 marker matches at FTDNA and my lone 37 marker match along with several people at the U106 project who seem to follow my pattern of  DYS390 = 25, DYS385b = 11, YCA2a and b = 19 and 22. Within the spreadsheet for U106 those markers are enough to make the modal look like me and give my values for several other markers like DYS447 = 24, without even trying. Blue guys are people who match that self imposed pattern. Red are 25 matches, Yellow is the 37. London is unfairly represented because if people just said "England" I plopped them into London. I also plunked my Boettcher German FTDNA match in Neidersachsen based on House of Names.

So this is why I'm guessing Saxon English for us. I should note here that even though my matches are English many have names that are assigned to Belgium by House of Names like Dameron or Huguenots like Pipkin. House of names is not the trusted source for all surnames of course, but it makes me think about my 23 and me matches to people with Huguenots from Ulster and New Paltz New York. Still, I have a much stronger showing among Germans as far as bulk goes so I'm left back with the most obvious Saxon conclusion until evidence to the contrary presents itself. My best guess, knowing what little I know is that we're among some group of Anglo Saxons who made their way to England after about 400ad.

I hate to lose my Danish matches but I imagine we are just more distantly related to some common ancestor farther back in time.

Again, according to FTDNA, IF I shared a surname with that yellow Elmer we would most likely be related within the time frame of the common use of surnames in Europe. So, I think we're talking about the 1100s on up. If we share a common SNP and still remain close at 67 markers..then I think the time frame would be much closer.

If there is a crossover, I suspect that it would happen with the Thompsons from New Jersey in the 1700s or the Thompsons from Braintree Massachusetts and farther back in Braintree England in the 1600s to early 1700s as both Thompsons and Elmers exist in those areas at the same time and at least in the case of the New Jersey Thompsons, definitely intermarry. 

At a minimum, I think we and the Elmers are at least people from the same area, possibly from the same town and we're definitely related because we share the U106 SNP. The only question left is WHEN are we related. Our common ground could be in England in the 1600s...or even farther back. 

I have my doubts about "The Aunts" knowing this when they related to my father that we were "English" Thompsons. So much of what I'm doing is chasing things they may have already known, but I think if they knew we were secretly "Elmers" they would have related that as well. That leads me to think that they were aware of a family of English Thompsons here in the U.S. and that they had tied us to it, rightly or wrongly.

I am trying to be evidence based of course but I'm at the point where I can't ignore the "English" story any longer. I'm not unbiased, I've been considering it the whole time, but I do remain skeptical of it on principle. I've looked at it, thinking there was a grain of truth, but I have to think now that it is just a truth truth. I also think most people would have accepted it at face value and moved on so I think I've done my fair share of homework on it. I may be coming to the wrong conclusion, but I don't think after these past years, that I am jumping to it.

Since I can't really dispute "English-ness" without better or further evidence, I should probably take them at their word and see what English Thompsons I can come up with. This is difficult. Irish and Scots Thompsons I can get by the bucketful. English Thompsons are a bit harder to come by right now. Among Thompsons anti-English sentiment is still running pretty high (after hundreds of years). I wonder if it was different when "The Aunts" were doing their search.

Time has moved on and things have gotten lost. I cannot go back to talk to them.