No Paternal DNA matches

[calvert]

Thankyou for all your replies and advice.  Regarding ancestry I’m in the process of categorising all matches into maternal and paternal. I presume somewhere in the unassigned maybe the answer to who my paternal grandfather is. With regards myheritage and auto clusters, there is one cluster involving 5 members that I can’t assign to any part of my tree. One of these matches has shared dna of 203cm to me, so quite a close family link, however I have no idea how this person and the cluster fits into my tree…again I’m hoping this cluster may shed light on my paternal grandad.

[David Nicoll]

Happy Hunting!

Two things spring to mind.

Perhaps try unlinking your paper grandfather from your Ancestry tree. He may be confusing the Ancestry matching algorithm.
Also, don’t ignore your Paternal Ancestry matches, the matching algorithm may be picking up paternal matches correctly.
Finally that 203cm match certainly sounds interesting, hopefully one of those matches has built a tree? Or at least the start of one. I have built a few based on that to try and explain dna matches, it is so much easier working backwards in time to try and find someone in the right place. Though even then it can leave a woolly bit in the middle. I have one New Zealand link that I can get back to London , but can’t get the link between him in London and the likely link to my family in Angus, Scotland. But that is what makes it fun!

[Biggles50]

The 203cM match looks promising.

Hopefully they have a useful name you can build a tree around and other shared match’s that can be incorporated into said tree.

203cM has a high probability of being in the 2C range and for that it is at Great Grandfather level as a possible MRCA so again, hopeful.

A 240cM match to me is a Half 2C in the tree branch I created to solve a missing Father from a Birth Certificate, whilst there will probably never be a paper trail it is the best one can do.

Also you may like to look up Court Records as there may be a Paternity claim against the Father.  This may require a visit to the appropriate County Archives as not all such records are digitised.

[calvert]

Thanks for replies, yes the 203 match is promising. I’ve made contact with the person several times as his family/ancestry is from where my dad was born. Unfortunately none of my efforts so far have been positive, he is unwilling to help, or doesn’t know any information.

[David Nicoll]

Hi, probably they don’t know, even if they know the person was a bit of a rogue, it can a take time to come to terms with. The best thing is to build trees and confirm all the matches make sense. The you can potentially go in to more detail with chromosome matching. But you have to accept that that might be as far as you get, with an 80 or 90 percent probability of your ancestry.

[calvert]

Thanks, yes I know that I may not probably ever know for sure, which is really frustrating as 30 years off/on building a tree thinking my paternal ancestors were Calvert’s, to be suddenly told they are not.

[dublin1850]

With wars etc. resulting in lots of deaths of young men, it is not at all unusual that you might have no matches with a particular surname. I have an entire branch which started out as one surname but now has many matches of a variety of surnames all through women. Unfotunately all the men died out in wars, or were childless, so none of my matches on that branch have the 'original' surname.

[coombs]

Thanks, yes I know that I may not probably ever know for sure, which is really frustrating as 30 years off/on building a tree thinking my paternal ancestors were Calvert’s, to be suddenly told they are not.

Although it is who bought you up that counts, and the fact you inherited the Calvert surname even if your dad was not a biological Calvert. I found out that my uncle born Sep 1944 was likely not the son of my grandfather as his war records hint this, and uncle looked different to the other siblings, such as taller, had darker skin and was more extroverted.