I enjoy looking at my DNA matches on Ancestry.com. It never ceases to amaze me that you can now find scientific evidence for the family relationships established previously by paper records. There’s something extraordinary about using a bit of spittle to prove what someone did hundreds of years ago, such as the bigamy committed near Niagara Falls by my ancestor which I wrote about in my book A Hell of a Descent.
One thing I’ve noticed is that if a distant uncle or aunt emigrated to the US in the 19th century, then they tend to have far more descendants in my DNA matches than the members of the family they left behind. I think that’s partly because they had large families that were able to populate an almost empty continent, while their relatives on this crowded island only had a few children each, and it’s partly because at this point in time more Americans have had their DNA tested.
Sometimes I have a group of 20 or 30 cousins where I am the only one in the UK. This can mean that in some cases I am more certain about the British ancestry of the emigrant than their descendant can be. If I can see that I’m related to 20 descendants of somebody by several of their children, then I can be sure I’m related to that person. If the descendant sees me as the only cousin in the UK then it’s harder for them to be certain that I’m related through that particular ancestor.
Ancestry.com can help. It has a feature called Thru Lines which shows users relationships it has discovered that are proved (or suggested) by DNA matches.
For instance, my gggg grandparents John Ward (1793-1866) and Harriet Robson (1794-1882) from East Yorkshire had several children. I have no DNA matches (apart from my mother) who descend from my ggg grandfather Thomas Ward, but I have 29 who descend from their daughter Sarah. Her son John Burrell married a lady who abandoned him and emigrated in 1886 with their children (including one as yet unborn son) to join the Mormons in the US and Mexico. I have DNA matches who are descendants of five of these children.
Even without the Thru Lines feature it’s clear to me that Sarah is from my family, but to one of her descendants it would not be obvious that Thomas was her brother. Ward is a very common name and they might find several DNA matches in the UK with a Ward in their tree. In this case the Thru Lines feature will help them to identify John and Harriet as Sarah’s parents.
But it depends on the information in people’s trees. It often happens that people copy trees and false information can get repeated to the point where it seems to be fact.
I have ten DNA matches with descendants of four of the children of John Foster (1847-1927), who emigrated from Lancashire to Kalo, Iowa in the 1880s. His marriage certificate clearly shows that his father was William Foster, my ggg grandfather from Billinge, but so many people have guessed at other names for his father and linked him to incorrect records back in Lancashire that Thru Lines doesn’t recognise him as part of my family. (It’s quite hard to find his marriage record because although his wife’s maiden name is well-known, it was her second marriage and she has a different name on the record.) Once again, from my point of view I can see clearly that John is related to me, but his descendants would not know for sure. Lots of their DNA matches would have a Foster in their tree despite being related via other branches.
In that case, the marriage certificate leaves no doubt who was the father of John and anybody who checks thoroughly can reach the right answer even without the help of Thru Lines.
In other cases the truth is not clear-cut enough to stand much chance of overturning any errors that have crept into prevailing traditions.
I have ten DNA matches descending from five children by two wives of Job West (1812-1876) who lived in Buncombe County, North Carolina and Solo, Texas, Missouri. Some of these matches share over 20cM of DNA with me, which means, according to ancestry.com, that they are 4th to 6th cousins. Job and his siblings are mentioned in the will of his father, Leonard West (1787-1855). Leonard was said to have been of Scotch-Irish extraction, although in the 1850 Census he gave his birthplace as Tennessee. My most distant West ancestor, my gggg grandfather Patrick West was a farmer in Killinchy-in-the-Woods in County Down in Ulster in the first half of the 19th century. The DNA evidence seems to suggest that Leonard and Patrick were closely related.
But most people researching Leonard have placed him as the son of William West (1752-1842) and Angeline Clendennin. William West enlisted in Chatham County, North Carolina in 1781 and died at the home of his son-in-law (and nephew) James Milliken in Sulphur Springs, Simpson, Kentucky. This is certainly plausible — histories such as The West Family Register suggest that William had a son called Leonard, and our Leonard seems to be about the right age — but there seems to be no concrete proof.
William is a very popular ancestor, appearing in 1262 family trees on Ancestry at the time of writing, but I only have DNA matches with descendants via Leonard. Various researchers have claimed that he was born in England, or in the US. Some people have traced his ancestry back several more generations in the US. I haven’t found anybody else who thinks he was Irish. Most of the evidence about his ancestry seems to come from the suggestion that he was the brother of Amos West (1766-1819) and Leonard West (1760-1842) who both also ended up in Simpson County, Kentucky.
It shouldn’t be hard to check whether William is the father of our Leonard. If he was, then descendants of Leonard would undoubtedly have DNA matches among the numerous descendants of William’s other children, or of his brothers. I would like to hear from any of Leonard’s descendants to see whether we can use DNA to trace our West ancestors in Ireland.
Chris West Ancestry Blog 