Help in Using DNA To Find Father

[JohnDoe2020]

Good morning. Flemming is providing good advice. I think these are good matches for your quest. I would create groups in ancestry with the shared matches of these three. I would also upload to my heritage and to family tree dna. It is free and you can see your matches without paying a fee. To use their tools a one time fee is involved, very modest. This will expand your search to several million other results and you will see new matches. DNA painter provides the probability of a match based on cm. Remember that there are generational influences on the number of cms. A half relative will show a smaller cm match score than a full relative, but they are effectively in the same relationship position. Good luck.

[Stephen K]

I have looked at both B & E's trees. B's tree is a mess with a number of people included in it more than once & marriages of people with an age gap of 80 years plus. Most of the people in both trees are in the US.  My wife and I were born and have always lived in Ireland. We know that my wife's mother was from Ballyconnell in Co. Cavan and although she moved to London she never visited the US. The Ancestry DNA for my wife shows her as not only being 100% Irish but also 100% from the border county area which of course includes Co. Cavan. With this in mind I only looked at people born in Ireland and I did come up with one group of people that both trees have in common and whats more they come from the general Co. Cavan area. Unfortunately of course those who are recorded as still alive have their identy hidden from me. Is there any further I can go before I try and make contact with persons B & E?

[JohnDoe2020]

You may have done this but try searching selected individuals on the trees and see if you get some better sources. Perhaps they will have real records you can use or belong to other family trees that are better documented. I would upload the dna to FTDNA and My Heritage. It's free and you can see your matches. If you have other more significant matches you can decide then to pay the fee to use their tools. Ftdna is different than ancestry as they dont have records libraries to search. I have found good matches on both. The my heritage tools are better than ancestry, chromosome browser and clustering tool, but their search is about the same.

[Flemming]

Quick thought - if you do upload to FTDNA, you could join the North of Ireland DNA project and may get some specialist help from the project team.

https://www.nifhs.org/dna/

[Flemming]

With this in mind I only looked at people born in Ireland and I did come up with one group of people that both trees have in common and whats more they come from the general Co. Cavan area. Unfortunately of course those who are recorded as still alive have their identy hidden from me. Is there any further I can go before I try and make contact with persons B & E?

If you can find a married couple who are common in the Cavan trees, you can build a tree down from them as far as you can go. When you do this, you might be able to work out who the living people are. Even if not, it at least should narrow down a more recent family group that your wife's father is part of.

The same applies for the people in the US. If you build a tree downwards from their common ancestors, then remove the lines that went to the US, you should be left with a family group that stayed in Ireland and related to your wife more closely.

Also, if you've identified the common ancestors in several trees, you can try searching for them in Ancestry's members' trees. These aren't always the most reliable sources of info but some people do a good job and you may find a lot of leg work has been done for you already.