3rd Cousin match and the mystery great grandmother

[belindy]

I have a mystery great grandmother born c1891 supposedly in Kensington, London.
The paper trail has run out, and in fact I’m not sure the papers I have are accurate(possibly incorrect information given on marriage certificate etc).

I have previously hired a dna expert to search through my dad’s ancestry dna matches and she came to the conclusion that there were 0 dna matches from that particular line.

I now have a 3rd cousin match with 50cm.
Is it possible to solve this mystery with that small amount of cm?

[rsel]

Hi,
   50 cM is on the lower end for a 3rd Cousin DNA match,  only 17% probability, check the DNA painter shared cM tool for the full list of possible relationships.  So it may be possible to solve your mystery, but it may take some work.
   Based on you saying you hired a DNA expert, i am assuming you are not very experienced in using your DNA results to find relationships ? (apologies if that's not correct).  The trick is to not think of DNA as a magic bullet that will immediately solve your question, but to think of it as way to get some very good clues. My suggestion will be to build out a tree for the match, and then look at shared matches you both share and try to fit into that tree. By doing this you can hopefully narrow down the ancestors that you may have in common. With this you can then start to work out the possible connection points to your line.   So for example if your match has shared matches, which result in a common ancestor for them around the born around 1850's, you would know that the chances are one of the children for that common ancestor is likely to be the parent of your GGM.

Richard

[Petros]

Incorrect information on marriage certificates is not uncommon, especially the father's name. Often a made up name is provided for an illegitimate child.

[Gadget]

If this is on Ancestry, it might be worth subscribing to Pro Tools for a month or so. This migtht identify some shared matches that might indicate the relationship.

https://support.ancestry.com/s/article/Ancestry-Pro-Tools-Membership?language=en_US

[Biggles50]

I do not think your DNA Expert was much of an expert.

50cM together with the Shared Matches between the pair of you should be more than enough to make progress.

My number one rule is “Do not believe Certificates and Documentation unless you have supportive DNA validation”!

In the meantime if you have First Cousins who are willing, have them take a DNA test as it will help in checking the DNA Matches and their results will help validate your tree and since DNA is inherited in a random fashion your Cousin who tests may have more cM with your match than you do.

Downloading a copy of your DNA and uploading it to My Heritage may give additional useful DNA Matches, do look up other threads on My Heritage as they have an offer on at present.

Additionally upload a copy of your DNA to Gedmatch where even more DNA Matches should be available.

DNA is not a magic bullet as so well stated by rsel, you do need to research it, and learn how to use it.

A good place to start would be by searching and reading threads.

[haliared]

As this is a new match of 50cM that has turned up, it might be worth going back to your DNA expert as they would have already set up all of the groupings and tree lines and should be able to help you easily if the DNA and paper trail match and you have other decent cM amounts upon that line but if the paper trail is wrong and there are no decent shared matches and no obvious connections within that group, it is possible to find the link, but would take a lot of work and time.

[Petros]

I do not think your DNA Expert was much of an expert.

50cM together with the Shared Matches between the pair of you should be more than enough to make progress.

My number one rule is “Do not believe Certificates and Documentation unless you have supportive DNA validation”!

Indeed. my wife's GGM was born in 1886 and according to both the 1891 census and marriage certificate her grandfather was stated to be her father. Her birth certificate listed no father. (She was a servant in 1901 before she married in 1906)

[Glen in Tinsel Kni]

I wouldn't be convinced the 3c prediction is accurate, there are so many possible relationships at that amount and there's  none that are that much more likely than another. Knowing there's an illegitimate birth in the mix a half cousin match is a very real possibility.

As always it's a case of checking hared matches, building trees and trying to figure the connections but the issue, as already mentioned, is that documents and bmd index entries are only a reflection of what was said. I pity anyone tying to fathom a link to me (beyond the issue of finding my birth name),  both my parents certs have the wrong father on them and both were more than 100 years ago which doesn't help, the same is true for one of my two proven grandparents by which point we are back to the 1880's, I'm not even 60 yet so most think there's a generation missing somewhere.  There are so many holes in my ancestry my tree now resembles a forest after intensive logging operations. 

[belindy]

Hello everyone,
Many thanks for all the helpful replies.
Unfortunately I just can’t seem to get my head around the more detailed bits about dna matching!

It’s quite possible that I never solve the mystery, especially if her name wasn’t her birth name etc.
I have built trees for my matches and track each female born around the time my great grandmother would have been born.

Her daughter, my nana, was illegitimate and a story was made up to cover that up. Thanks to dna I unraveled it!
So she wasn’t adverse to fibbing a little bit!

Thank you all again.