Am I on the right thinking here.

[Essnell]

Hi Roots Chatters, 
Our family is searching an unknown pair of grandparents.  The grandson has done the DNA with Ancestry.

From that we have found the Grandmother:  but no idea who is the grandfather.  Birth rec for the child is available and has no father recorded and the child was given the mother's family name. 

Now this is in a very distant rural township area of the country and in 1900's. 
What has been noticed is that there are marriages that cross the last names together to interlinking the families, particularly on the grandmother's line. 
It appears to be similar with the grandfather's line but we are not getting anything that works. Just isolated family groups.   
Matches trees are there in some instances but they are only adding to the confusion. 
 I am about to tackle putting what I know into a genealogy tree program  to see if I can find any sort of link. 

Any other ideas would be appreciated.  I can't name names etc because of privacy and living persons. 

Regards and thanks,
Essnell
 

[David Nicoll]

Hi,
   Yes, in principle, however I am a little confused. You say that you don’t know the grandfather and then go on to say that family names are linked?
   You don’t give us any idea of the cM level of any of the matches which would make it easier to help, we don’t need names.
    As you say, rural areas can make DNA trees complicated, with matches through multiple lines.
     I have matches who are a bigger match than either parent due to both parents being related to me, even if very distantly, at the 5/6 generation level.
     It is a slow process. You are correct in that you need to build a tree for as many of the matches as possible and try and work out where they intersect.
     As has been mentioned here before labelling each match with a group name / colour which the shared match of the match allows you to build family groups.
     Two further suggestions would be, if you build the tree in Ancestry, you will benefit from the relative finding algorithms that they provide. Thrulines etc, they are not always correct, you have to prove the links yourself, but again I have found confirmed 5/6 generation matches this way. And secondly a short subscription to pro tools is probably worth it. It is much easier to put groups together when you understand how the shared matches are related, especially at the 2nd or third cousin level.
Happy hunting.

[Biggles50]

Please read post #28 in thread https://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=863488.27

This is the method that I use and often suggest to rootschatters.

You can also use The Leeds Method to group your qualifying matches, there is a website explaining it.

https://www.danaleeds.com/the-leeds-method/

Once you get a tree built with the DNA matches incorporated into it then if you upload it to the WATO tool in DNA painter that should give you some help.

Endogamy may well screw results so may affect your results. 

To give an example I have a 364cM match whose shared cM level is significantly higher than should be given the relationship we have with each other.  Her First Cousins share cM levels with me that she should share.  As many other matches exist and all have the expected cM level the only hypothesis that works is that her Father was the product of an endogamous relationship despite all the BMD records showing otherwise.  I have reached out to the family many times but despite contacting different family members they have all closed ranks and will not respond.

[Essnell]

Hi David and Biggles 50,

Thank you both for your responses.   
Firstly I am working with others who actually hold all the DNA files. I was given an invite several weeks ago and was able to access the DNA and the cM values then. Something has gone amiss with my access and I think it has to do with updating my OS on this and my main computers. They are LINUX ones. I have realized that that also affects the cache and this is why access as been refused by Ancestry. I have contacted them and all they suggest is to completely clear the cache. That is at this point not an option.     

Now  I  have actually spoken to the person holding the DNA and I will soon get a new invite. That will help.  In the interim I was considering making several trees around the information I had already made notes about.  It would be a good start.    On the actual site I had started doing the grouping  unfortunately due to the update I can no longer access  through the cache which allowed me to access already viewed pages and work off those and see the groupings.     

So I am sort of working a bit blind. 

This is re finding a set of grandparents -  Who, in reality to living people, are the great grandparents.    I have found the grandmother it's her partner we need to find if possible.

So person A  with parents W  father  and Z Mother.  Mother here is quite well known.   Father W's parents are  R father and Q mother.    Q we have found  it's R we are looking for.   

 In the search most of the searching was concentrated around her Q and her family as many of  their last names appeared in the match listings,  We think that this part is pretty well sorted.  I have made that into a huge pedigree document for us.   
What has me/us questioning is the fact that all these other individuals on the DNA match on Ancestry do not appear to be as cohesive as  the female side.  In  that list there are names matching those in the female side.

It was back then 1890 - 1920 a small community .   The place names show that .  I was also wondering if a place name map might be useful, just to see how small the community was. 

Okay, Biggles I am going to try your method in that post, from the provided link. 

Once i have access again i will come back with whatever i find.   

Thanks for reading and sorry it's a bit rambling,
  Essnell

[David Nicoll]

Esnell,
    You are very welcome.
    I would not get too bogged down with surnames.
    You need to build those trees. I have quite a lot of low cM matches who the tree peters out 5 generations back with a tantalising family name before records begin.
    Or another where the match and I share twenty names in our tree, and as Biggles50 says not as close a match as they would appear.
    With the crossed names I would say that is not uncommon everywhere, a man marries a woman and the brother of the woman marries the sister of the man.
    Finally with your name consistently, you may simply be seeing confirmation bias. All the matches on the females side have the shared name because they are the easy any obvious links and trees to build.

Happy Hunting

[Biggles50]

With an unknown Father it can be that his Uncle and his offsprings can lead to the identity of the Father.

Hence build the trees and if all else fails wait until more DNA Matches apear.

There is also the WATO tool on DNA Painter that you could try.

If the line is direct male to male then a 111 yDNA test may provide help.  It is a longshot but it worked for me as I have hundreds of matches with every surname that you can think of but only four who bear the family name that I was expecting.  It goes to show that you cannot rely on documentation or birth records to display the truth.

Good luck.

[jc26red]

Have you thought about doing a YDNA test with familytreedna? this will show the paternal line. Results will show matches and hopefully there will be a common name occurring that you are familiar with, you can the search for possible men in the locale.  People who have already taken a ydna test usually put up a simple tree and you can contact closer matches to see if there is any information the matches can possibly help you with. It isn’t cheap though as the basic tests will have way too many matches if your ydna is one of the more common/later branches. Might be worth exploring the possibility before spending a fortune though.

[jc26red]

To follow on from Biggles last reply, ai had an Ancestry match with someone at 2x great grandfather level…
emailed the tree owner, who was doing this for her husband and it had always been assumed the young lady, a servant,  had married her widowed boss but the dna didn’t come up with any matches. When I emailed, I said well she matched with my family and one of the family (a married man) lived next door around the time of conception, luckily close enough to a census year!  You do need to check where the mother was living and the expand out to possible neighbours, relatives and others who were maybe living in the same household if she was a servant.

[Essnell]

Jc26red and Biggles50, 

Regarding an uncle i still have ti find one that isn't directly related to the  Mother,  so I am looking for Aunts  Uncles and or cousins on the paternal side . 

We have considered that the child we are trying to trace may have even been fathered by the man she eventually married but the DNA isn't showing that. Too many odd little groups.   

As to the y111 test  the one test that has been done was a xmas gift from me.  I can't pay for this second test much as I might like to.    Unfortunately living with a 60 odd year old set of fabricated family stories,  it's going to be hard to accept the truth about ones father and then thence their grandparents.   Because of that our research has to be spot-on.   
I will keep you posted on our progress.
Thank ever so much for all the suggestions ideas and examples. 
Essnell.