Unknown gt grandfather

[pollycat76]

My paternal grandmother Florence was born in 1881 to my gt grandmother Sarah who had been a Widow for six years ! Florence had a number of older half siblings and I have a Dna match of 4th to 6th cousin with one of their descendants with whom I am in touch. I also have Dna matches through Sarah's maiden name, but a lot of unidentified 3rd-4th cousins who I cannot match to either side of my family. Is there anything I can do to help me solve the problem of who my grandmother's father might be ? Thank you.

[brigidmac]

Can any of my techniques posted in the topic about shared birth.great grandfathers be useful. ?

Have you seen.dna painter chart ?.

When half siblings are involved matches often come out as next generstion.down.
: half second cousins appear on ancestyr as probable  third cousins

[pollycat76]

Thanks for your reply, I will have a look at Dna Painter again and at your previous post.

[brigidmac]

Im doing a lot of comparisons on this kind of thing but
I go off on hunches a lot .& have not worked out how to explain the type of triangulation s  that bring success

Dont ignore the small matches .have you.used shared names + locations in your shared matches function

Make notes of surnames that occur in your matches trees then try those surnames out in the surname search and see if you can group your shared matches

[guest189040]

I am in the same boat, my Great Grandmother does not have a Father listed on her birth cert.

Her Mum had two children with no Father listed and we have found that her Sister also produced two children by unknown Fathers.

I have not been able to identify any possible Fathers.

The best advice I can give you is to fill out your Family Tree sideways as much as you can for seven generations.  This will give you plenty of surname variations and hence may help in creating a branch to your DNA match.

I have 381 DNA matches of 4th Cousin or closer of which I have linked to 41.  Not without a lot of effort and luck and recognising a surname in a matches tree has helped a lot just as Brigidmac suggests.

Use the colour coding of matches in the Groups and Shared Matches often helps.

It is a hard slog building up your tree but the more you build the more chance you have of that light bulb find.

See my thread on my 364 cM DNA match that is a nightmare linking to and the techniques that I have been using.

[brigidmac]

I am collaberating with.an adoptee at the moment .she knows her birth mother .
From all our shared matches ....despite several closed trees we identified  mutual great grandparents
Then looking at strongest matches for her ; narrowed down the grandfather

He only had one legitimate son but I dont think the dna match quite tallies so the father would have different surname ...today we.re going to see if she has any matches to the grandmothers name and location further back ...it wont neccessarily prove the theory because no matches could mean no other descendants or none that have tested

But adding to her tree unknown father unknwn grandfather Smith then greatgrandfather george SMITH
Allows her to see second cousins potential cousinsand half cousins

I did the similar for my cousin we added unknown southshields man as his great grandfather then found a dna match who also had a great grandmother who was a single mum ..whod given birth in southshields we still dont know who the man was but their mutual sons were obviously half brothers
DNA strongly indicates but location confirms ...their other grandparents were italian
& the english side emigrated

. ethnicity can be a bonus if an  unknown grandparent is 100 per cent Scottish Jewiish or italian this will show up around 25percent in your DNA so worth looking at  !

Ps Follow Biggles advice ....notice how painstaking it is !
Dont forget paper trail maybe Florence s mother took the birth father to court and got an affiliation order

[Alandal]

Pollycat76,

For the past 50 years my father and I could not locate the birth and parents for my Great Grandfather, but had managed to compile an in depth Tree for most other family lines.  After both of us undertaking DNA tests a few years ago, I went through the closer matches and allocating the matches to our known family connections.  This did involve having to create new family branches to find some of the connections.

This left approximately six/eight closer matches where no connections could be found.  We knew the approximate year of my Great Grandfathers birth so started creating new trees for these unknown families and and expanding them to ensure that there were no possible way that GGF could form part of that family.

Eventually, a new tree was formed where one child suddenly ‘vanished’ when they were a late teenager.  The date of birth of tied in with my GGF and we found out that he left North Wales and moved down to London, adopted a new Surname and started a new career. 

Similarly to the above, I have an adopted Uncle whose birth Mother was known but only a vague surname for his father who allegedly dies in WW2 which passed down via my grandparents.

After having DNA tests done, again I matched up his know maternally family matches and started working through the remainder.  This eventually located a family in Canada (with a similar surname, but with different spelling), where I found a member who during WW2 was in the UK and was based approximately 10 miles away from where my Uncles birth mother was working as a nurse.  We assume that they must have met up at a dance or similar and my Uncle resulted.

His father did return to Canada (where he was already married with his own family) but we have not made contact with his birth fathers his children/grand children yet, to reveal they have a half brother/ uncle.

So what worked best for me (but obviously may not work in all circumstances) is to remove the known matches and find out the links to the remaining matches.

Good luck,

Al & Al

[brigidmac]

With dna testees from different generations and from descendants of all sides of a recomposed family (second marriage for both 1880) we can narrow down bloodines from one set of 6 x grandparents

Then looked at cm amounts compared with range dna painter says for second cousins etc

Realised which line adoptee connected  to then which generation

It didnt fit until we calculated that her birth father was from the generation earlier ie b 1888s not 1910

There is only one legitimate son of suitable age in that family but still havevto leavevopen thevpossibility that her grandfather may have had a child outside marrage  ...
That may not make sense ...to you ..you need to apply your own examples ....good luck