Crucianize

Tag: DNA Connections

  • Half Cousins galore!

    Half Cousins galore!

    This month has actually been pretty active for DNA cousins, I had one of my cousins pop up, they are actually my half 1st cousin but in my family we don’t really use “half”. I also had the child of one of my cousins pop up, again they are half relation but we don’t use those terms.

    Itr is actually interesting to see the shared relatives between both of my cousins. I was expecting to see just relatives of my grandfather but sprinkled in there were relatives from my grandmother’s side and my father’s paternal and maternal side!

    This is interesting to me because my grandparents were from different countries. My paternal grandfather was from Saint-Barthélemy in the French caribbean, my paternal grandmother was from St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands and my maternal grandparents were from Dominica.

    I’m trying not to get ahead of myself while speculating on the relationships of all these dna relatives and what it means that they show up in my shared relatives in common with my cousins. It is entirely possible that I am related to this person on their paternal side and my cousin is related to them via their maternal side. I have no idea how I’m actually going to prove these lines though, Dominica genealogy is the most frustrating one I have ever had to deal with, if I could find my way to a family history center and view the records on, FamilySearch I would be so happy but I have no way to gain access to one. I hope that the records for Saint George parish will be made available one day and I’m able to search whenever I want.

    Here is my Half first cousin, their parent is my mother’s half sibling. We share 7% of our DNA, 485 cM across 22 segments. My cousin and our aunt who is my full aunt share 1031 cM across 34 segments while I share 1808 cM across 60 segments. My cousin actually share a little more DNA with my brother than I do and I don’t like it lol, my brother actually shares 594 cM across 20 segments, it doesn’t really change the fact that this is our cousin but in my mind it’s like they are more his cousin than mine and it makes me a little sad. It’s an illogical thought but my mind travels down these paths frequently.

    Now, here is my half 1st cousin once removed, we share 4% of our DNA, 301 cM across 11 segments, their shared DNA with my aunt is intereting, 223 cM across 10 segments, I share more DNA with them than they share with my aunt, I wonder if it means that my mother shares more DNA in common with this half sibling or maybe their other parent is somehow related to me through my father. This cousin’s parent is my half 1st cousin which means their grandparent is my mother’s half sibling.

    So here is a little chart showing piece of my family tree, I have way more aunts and uncles than is shown here, I just wanted to show where my cousins are located in the family tree.

    I wish some of my cousins on my father’s side would test so I can see how much DNa we share and what relatives they might be related to that doesn’t show up for me or my brother. They don’t seem to be interested in it but one can only hope.

  • Ancestry Pro Tools

    Ancestry Pro Tools

    Ancestry has really been on my last nerves for a while now. They did an update a while back where you can’t view your DNA relatives in common with someone or view their tree unless you have an active subscription, and I find that move left a sour taste in my mouth. Even without a subscription, I could separate my DNA relatives into groups to figure out how they are related to me. But it gets even worse – groups, even my custom groups that I had created over many years, are now paywalled. I swore that I wouldn’t pay for Pro Tools, swore that I would not pay for another subscription, but Ancestry kept enticing me with $1 subscriptions, and I cave every single time.

    In June, I decided that I would take the bullet and pay for Pro Tools. I parted with my €11.25 very reluctantly. Oh, I was punching the air and saying if it wasn’t worth it, I would be so mad. I’m even more pissed off that it has proved very useful. The one feature that I bought this subscription for was the Advanced matching. Basically, it does what 23andme and MyHeritage both do; it shows you the cM your DNA match shares with your matches in common and how they are possibly related to those matches. Angry, I am so angry because it immediately proved that my theory about a half-second cousin was correct. I had guessed at the connection to our shared DNA matches, but I really did not know how much DNA she would share with our shared matches, and now I know.

    I actually wrote a post about this match and how I went about proving that she was a half-second cousin. I just have the information about how much DNA she shares with my known half-second cousin 2x removed.

    Here’s the post if you haven’t read it: Detective Lynnette and the Case of the Mysterious DNA Relative

    I want to say I don’t know if I will renew, but I am still undecided because I have not done everything I wished I could do with this new tool, and I will no doubt continue to get more DNA relatives and I’ll need to figure out how they are related to my other matches. I will probably stagger my subscription because I cannot pay for this every single month.

  • Detective Lynnette and the Case of the Mysterious DNA Relative

    Detective Lynnette and the Case of the Mysterious DNA Relative

    Let me tell you about this Mysterious DNA relative in my brother’s Ancestry list that haunted me for a few years.

    Mystery DNA Relative

    Shared DNA: 66 cM across 6 segments

    Unweighted shared DNA: 73 cM

    Longest segment: 28 cM

    This was a fairly close relative but she did not match with any of our other relatives, no matches with the hundreds of relatives on our grandfather’s side so I could cross that side out. No matches with our maternal matches so she wasn’t related to our mother. No matches with our father’s maternal grandmother’s relatives so that only left Alfredo who I wasn’t sure was our real great-grandfather because of the lack of DNA matches.

    The tree was no help because everyone up to grandparents was Private so I had no clues to go by but this was a mystery I was determined to solve.

    By chance, I happened to see this same relative on MyHeritage with a more open tree, and going through the tree I immediately noticed that her maternal grandparents were not from the Virgin Islands and I did not recognize any of the names. I started working on a mirror tree and everyone was born in the USA so I crossed out her mother’s family as being the connection, her father was Private but his father was not, it was just a name but one I know from the Virgin Islands.

    I was intrigued.

    I knew the last name but not the first name so off to Familysearch and Ancestry to do some searches, I was coming up empty, even looking through my DNA relatives I didn’t get any other matches with this surname in their tree, what could this possibly mean?

    It was scratching at the back of my mind but I didn’t want to answer it just yet, I wanted solid proof and that came a few months after I did my own DNA test at Ancestry, this match still was the only person connecting to both me and my brother until she matched with one other person.

    The New Match

    Shared DNA: 98 cM across 5 segments

    Unweighted shared DNA: 98 cM

    Longest segment: 38 cM

    This new match had a surname I knew but couldn’t place, she was instrumental in me finally connecting the mystery match to the tree and our family but the name was aggravating me with its illusive trail until I went back over my tree looking at the children of my great-grandfather Alfredo. There it was the name that was flirting with me, my great-aunt, the half-sister of my grandmother had married a man with the name of the new match. The new match was the granddaughter of my great-aunt.

    So if the mystery match also matches the granddaughter of my great-aunt that can only mean one thing, she was also a descendant of my great-grandfather Alfredo, but how? The last name of her grandfather, her grandfather was the full sibling of my great-aunt, they shared the same mother instead of being half-siblings like they were raised. So her grandfather was my great-uncle and that made her my half-second cousin.

    I honestly wondered if I should have even attached her grandfather to Alfredo but it seemed to me that maybe she was searching for her relatives, nobody takes a DNA test and uploads to multiple sites just for the fun of it. Oh yes, I forgot to mention I also found her on Gedmatch. So I put the information in my tree with the DNA connection and hoped she would see it and it would help.

    I have to admit though, Alfredo’s parents are still giant mysteries to me and I am no closer to cracking that particular nut just yet. I’m hopeful but the matches on that line are very few and far in between. At present count, I have just 3 matches excluding my brother. The two in this post and the granddaughter of Alfredo’s half-brother. With so many half connections is it any wonder that the DNA connections are on the smaller side?