A cluster of matches in South CArolina

[Petros]

I have a curious cluster of 6 matches on Ancestry from 13 to 28 cM who all share their descent from James Edward BARRINEAU (1822-1885) and Susan McCrea BROWN (1831-1857) with their ancestors also apparently from South Carolina.  However, I have no US ancestry and am unaware of any members of my ancestral families arriving in the US before the 1850s.

Any suggestions for how an early event might yield such matches, especially at 27 and 28 cM. Those two are relatively distant to each other

[Zaphod99]

Are you sure that you don't mean that you have no US ancestry, that you know of? DNA doesn't lie.

Zaph

[Petros]

I have no US ancestry that I know of and can trace most of my ancestral lines back to ca 1700, some early with a couple just to around 1800. All my known ancestors are from the Southern half of England.

These DNA matches are to my paternal line which is confined to a small number of counties

[Zaphod99]

As I found out recently, you only need one 15 minute illicit relationship that you don't know about, 100-odd years ago and you can have a lot of DNA matches who will be very difficult to place on your tree.

Zaph

[Biggles50]

My Wife is a Facebook friend to a distant 8cM Half Cousin of hers in the USA whose family emigrated to the USA.

On the same family line another USA Distant 24cM Cousin had a totally different ancestor emigrate to the USA.

It was only via DNA that we found them and made contact.

We were aware that yet another three different members of the same family who also emigrated to the USA.

Believe the DNA.

[Zaphod99]

Biggles, did you mean just eight centiMorgans for a half cousin? That is unbelievably low.

Zaph

[David Nicoll]

Hi,
    I would say certainly possible, I have a 28cM match with MRCA born 1773 and some further back 10 cM MRCA 1719. You only have to have one ancestor who went off to the States early to get this sort of cluster.
    Pedigree collapse can also make people seem closer than they are.

[Glen in Tinsel Kni]

I have several matches who claim I'm not related as they are US based & have no UK connections but they don't consider siblings of their pedigree line unless they are still alive.  They fly straight back through a generation of 10 children but only include their ancestor and are largely clueless to their family as a result.

[Biggles50]

Biggles, did you mean just eight centiMorgans for a half cousin? That is unbelievably low.

Zaph

His is a DISTANT Half Cousin, quote what I posted “distant Half Cousin”, H4C3R to be exact and outside DNA Painter’s reporting and at a level we would not generally follow up on.

His 4GGM was already in my Wife’s family tree as was her Husband.

No record of what happened to them in UK records or via passenger records but via the 8cM match’s tree we found that they had emigrated to the USA. 

We checked his lineage to be correct and made contact.

We often search Trees for specific family names and in this case he was just one of many and it was only his tree which was of sufficient size that we followed up on him.