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Got off to a good start. Quickly found an apparent death for the child she's supposed to be descended from   

To recap one of my biggest DNA projects...

My 2nd great grandfather was illegitimate with no father mentioned. With DNA, and descendants of several of his children having tested, I became quietly confident I identified the family the unknown man came from. I have a whole group of people descended from William TELFORD and Frances HAGGERSTON (as well as a few matches from the HAGGERSTON side) so in theory a son or grandson of theirs is my unknown man. Provided he himself was the legitimate child of a marriage I have a shot at figuring him out (more or less).

The surviving sons would have been a lot older than the mother at the time of conception, but age can't rule them out, particularly since I don't know how the conception took place and an older man may have been an attractive prospect to a young and impoverished widow. One of the sons, the youngest, was unmarried and living in the right place at the right time. If it was a grandson, however, he'd be more the same age as the mother and, crucially, I'd have a chance of finding DNA matches to the non-TELFORD side of the family.

In the case of their son Henry, he married Ann GREENER and his eldest couple of sons would be old enough to have fathered a child. In the case of their daughter Georgiana, she married Benjamin BELL and their eldest sons would also have been old enough, not to mention at least one was in the right place at the right time.

I suspected the BELL family primarily, until I got a number of matches to what appeared to be the same GREENER family and that family fitted in to one of the speculative lines I had for Ann GREENER. I thought I'd cracked it! Just goes to show how fickle the whole thing is and how wrong you can be while looking so right (a lesson for you all DNA folks!), I'm glad I had the sense to try to back up the DNA with paperwork instead of taking it as gospel because I turned out to be completely up the wrong tree. Ann's family was a completely different branch... which seems to curve back into HAGGERSTON (the aunt of Frances). I couldn't match the paperwork up to the DNA results, but perhaps the reason I have hits in HAGGERSTON is the potential I'm related to them twice...

Anyway... My focus shifted back to BELL, especially since the papertrail stops dead (and not just for me... not a single person has any information...)

Benjamin BELL, husband of Georgiana TELFORD, was said to be the 1st son of John BELL and Ann FORSTER... except there's no marriage and no other children so I'm suspicious that, like Ann GREENER's parents, there wasn't one and they were recorded as though there was!

The name "John BELL" is common enough that I haven't worked out (yet) which of several men he was. There's another family (on paper) coming from the same area with several of the same forenames (including Benjamin) and I have wondered if this is a cousin line, but I haven't managed to find a John among their lot so far.

I think I've had more luck with Ann FORSTER though... as the illegitimate daughter of Thomas FORSTER and Hannah EMMERSON. Hannah had at least two illegitimate children and I'm not sure she married. There's a potential death and corresponding christening that I noted down... and then noticed I had a DNA match to somebody who is descended from the same parents as that Hannah.

Here we go again 

I've sent them a message asking if they've done much research, particularly with DNA, in this area but we are talking low cM amounts (understandably). Naturally this person also doesn't DNA match with the TELFORD lot (and shouldn't!)

Wish me luck! I haven't had a lot of it lately 

(Also, while I'm shaking my head at the number of illegitimacies going down the family, kudos to having the father's names on them lol)

Ayashi

Apologies if this is a stupid question, but I'm not sure I understand what you're saying. 

No apologies needed, no stupid question

If I understand you correctly, you have an illegitimate great-great-grandfather (let's call him Mr. X). He had a wife. You've identified DNA matches with their descendants and with the descendants of other members of their wider families.

Correct. I've got DNA descendants from three children of the marriage. Mrs X had a big family so there are a lot of DNA cousins on her side. That was at least helpful in separating out shared matches of the descendants that didn't come from Mrs X's side of the family, meaning they should be Mr X. I have Mr X's mother's side back several generations so when I got a lot of matches to one family that wasn't hers, it seemed good odds that it is the unknown father's family.

You want the Custom Clusters to distinguish between the descendants of the father of Mr. X (the descendants of Mr. X's siblings) from Mr. X's descendants. But you're finding that the Custom Clusters can't do this.

I hoped that I could narrow the cluster down to only Mr X's father's family, showing cM amounts and positive connections between different members of that family and one or more descendants of Mr X. Instead, it ignored the names I asked it to compare between (and I know there's a DNA match, not least because it only allows 'sidekick' matches that are connected) and gave me large clusters only of Mrs X's family.

Is that because the amount of shared cMs is too small for the system to easily distinguish between Mr. X's descendants and his sibling's descendants? Is it because the system's cut-off of 20 cM as the lowest shared amount is too high for your purposes?

I wondered that, but I don't think so. The cM amounts are similar to Mrs X's family so at least a few of them should have shown up. One of the descendants is very biased towards Mrs X's DNA so I could understand it in his case, but another has more DNA in common with Mr X's side. After some fiddling with it I did eventually get some of them to show up but perhaps more would with a lower cM threshold as you say. I imagine a lot of it is me not understanding how the function works. It might also be comparing between my mother's DNA results and the home person (another descendant) I selected so it's giving all results for people we are both related to, although that still doesn't explain the bias towards Mrs X's results. I might have another tinker with it.

I hope you don't mind my asking. I'm trying to learn what I can about the DNA aspect of genealogy research and sometimes it's a struggle to wrap my mind around these things. I find that I tend to use various programs in limited ways and don't always know about everything they can do for me.

Not at all, although I think this entire thread is other people also being confused! Asking questions is great

My mother's side is actually quite consistent. My parents are averaging 70 (still alive), mum's parents 69. Their parents 71 and THEIR parents 66 (dragged down a little by one dying aged 30). Mine seemed to either go in their 50s or their 80s.