Could DNA testing help discover father of my illegitimate Grandmother?

[River Tyne Lass]

Thanks for this angelfish58.  That is very interesting that you have given this a try.  I am curious -did you manage to find your Grandmother's Father using this method? 

I have just added the Davisons' to my tree starting with a Davison with a question mark.  I am not sure exactly how to do the 'hypothesis method' so have just given this a go.  Now to see what might happen in the next few days.  If anyone can advise more on how to pose the hypothesis better - I will be grateful to hear about this.

[avm228]

Under a person’s name and dates in their profile within your Ancestry tree is an icon that looks like a luggage label. Click on that and you will get various “tag” options including “hypothesis”.

[River Tyne Lass]

Thanks avm .. I am just in the process now of changing them all to their hypothesis status.  I really appreciate your speedy help. 

Added .. there they are all updated. 

[Craclyn]

You should take the question mark out of the surname field for your hypothetical Davison. Extra characters impact on computer searching and matching. If you feel a need to put in a question mark then you can push it into the suffix field so it will not affect algorithms.

[River Tyne Lass]

Thanks Craclyn,

I have just amended this quickly as you have advised .. I wouldn't want to throw a spanner in the works just in case there is a biological link.

[KitCarson]

Great advice.  Will be using this for a couple of my lines.  Thanks, Kit

[angelfish58]

Thanks for this angelfish58.  That is very interesting that you have given this a try.  I am curious -did you manage to find your Grandmother's Father using this method? 

At the moment my sister and I think we've found her mother, all we had was her name from nana's birth certificate as nana was "adopted".
 I checked the 1901 Hartlepool census for women of the right name, narrowed it down by age to two likely candidates, I ignored married women (for now) as I thought they could most likely pass off a child as their husbands, I added both women to my Ancestry tree and traced their families. The first one had a couple of distant matches to my sister, but her ancestors were from towns in Co.Durham that we had ancestors from anyway but the second one has some much closer matches to both of us, so we are cautiously optimistic. In fact we have more matches on this line than on some of our documented ones.

[River Tyne Lass]

That is great that you are able to now be cautiously optimistic through DNA matching combined with your research .. I do wish you success with this.

I am afraid the Davisons may have to go soon - my Thrulines continue to show no matches for my Grandmother and there has been no increase in my DNA matches which currently has been 289.

However, I am pleased to have found out this 'hypothesis' idea - which I think is a very good feature.  No doubt I will be using this again.

[Miss Trees]

Re your question about using a hypothesis and worrying others might be mislead, I add a profile photo that says "testing" to my hypothesis individuals. Nobody can miss this I use the hypothesis tag also, but I'm not sure that other people see or notice the tag.

(And can't take credit for the idea, I stole it off someone else  )