Can anyone help me understand how we are related?

[pickpin]

Hi.  My friend recommended you guys to possibly help me make sense of my mum's DNA results.  My mum is trying to work out who her maternal grandfather was.  She had 6 close family matches, 5 of which are all related to each other and are not previously known relatives of my Mum so I am guessing these are relatives of her unknown Grandfather (we can't work out person no. 6).  Person no. 1 has 11% shared DNA: 785 cM across 21 segments and is similar age to my mum's mum.  Person no. 2 has 7% shared DNA: 485 cM across 17 segments, is the nephew of person 1 and is similar age to my mum.  Person no. 3 has 5% shared DNA: 327 cM across 15 segments.  She is the second cousin of person 2 (same great grandparents).  Person 4 has 4% shared DNA: 258 cM across 12 segments and is the brother of person 2.  Person 5 has 4% shared DNA: 247 cM across 11 segments and is the brother of person 3.  Another sibling of person 3 and 5 also appears a bit further down in the matches.  I feel like we are really lucky to have found so many matches in the same family.  Is there any way that by looking at them collectively it can help us work out who is the most likely grandfather.  I feel like it is probably the generation above person 1, where there are about 4 or 5 brothers to choose from!  I would be really grateful for any help anyone can give.  Many thanks in advance. xxx

[LizzieL]

this is really useful to give an idea of possible relationships

https://dnapainter.com/tools/sharedcmv4

[LizzieL]

I've tried to put together a chart of your results, hopefully I've interpreted it correctly and three possible scenarios of your Mum's relationship.
As grandaughter of #1's father
As grandaughter of # 3 and # 5's grandfather
As grandaughter of one of the other brothers (#1's uncles.

[rsel]

Hi,
   Have a look at the WATO tool on the same website LizzieL mentioned.  Just quickly putting what you have said, it suggests the most likely relationship is a daughter of a half-sibling of person 1 (see attached image), although there are a few more other options it suggests.  However, if you have some dates from the trees that you can enter on the tool, it might narrow it down a bt more for you.

Richard

[pickpin]

Thank you all so much for your replies.

I plotted everything into DNA painter, including the 6th match that I had and the dates that I know.  My numbers came out much smaller than yours, rsel, but it still had my mum being the daughter of a half sibling of person one as most likely relationship (3,429), followed by grandchild of a full sibling of person 1 (313) - which can't be the right relationship because I know that person 1 and my mum's mum definitely had different mums.

I was surprised to find that the hypothesis that my mum is a half first cousin of persons 3, 5 and 6 scored only 1, given that their CM numbers didn't seem drastically different to persons 2 and 4 on the other branch.

The third scenario you guys suggested, that my mum is the grandchild of one of person 1's other uncles (other than the father of persons 3, 5 and 6) came out at a score of 101.

With these scores, would you say it is very highly likely that Person 1's father is my mum's grandfather and that all the other options are very unlikely?

[brigidmac]

You could add that branch as a floating tree to your tree

A hypothetical extra grandfather birth grandfather to your mum ..
( I add the relationship tag as hypothetical then remove the relationship until I can confirm so the people stay on tree but floating ) especially with birth father's you need to keep the legal father because of the surname but you can add alternative step biological unknown .

You can look at locations /displacements /work opportunities  of her grandmother and potential grandfather's at time of conception of her parents and see if your line of matches breaks at any stage ...IE not having matches to the legal gfathers ancestors ....and having distant matches to all the other gparents . I hope that makes sense .

You can test out the other theories in a similar way and look at ages of potential candidates
I'm looking at similar scenario and not ruling out that a 60 year old could father a baby with a 20 year old but think it less likely than it being a younger man .

We are dealing with probabilities .

I didn't know how to use Waco but will try with the numbers I have been given to compare
Good luck

[LizzieL]

   Just quickly putting what you have said, it suggests the most likely relationship is a daughter of a half-sibling of person 1

I was thinking that was the most likely, too.

[pickpin]

Thanks all.  Looks like we have a most likely scenario and some outside chances that I will keep an open mind about.  A number of the brothers emigrated so I will do as bridgidmac suggests and next look at who could have been in the right country at the right time to see if that rules out a few brothers!